THE ART SPY: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland, by Michelle Young In 1980, while living in Belgium, the historian Lynn H. Nicholas read an obituary in The International Herald Tribune of the art curator Rose Valland, a French Army captain who had received the Legion D’Honneur for recovering more than … Read more
MALCOLM LIVES! The Official Biography of Malcolm X for Young Readers, by Ibram X. Kendi In my suburban, largely Black high school in 1980s New Jersey, we sang “Life Every Voice and Sing” at assemblies. We decorated the walls with wheat sheafs during Kwanzaa. And what seemed like every year, we read “The Autobiography of … Read more
WHO KNEW, by Barry Diller The yachterati’s worst-kept secret is now billowing in the wind. Barry Diller is gay, and yet also married — like, really married — to Diane von Furstenberg, a woman. After the carefully meted-out release of this news, is there still value in paying $30 for Diller’s memoir, “Who Knew”? I … Read more
APPLE IN CHINA: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by Patrick McGee A little more than a decade ago, foreign journalists living in Beijing, including myself, met for a long chat with a top Chinese diplomat. Those were different days, when high-ranking Chinese officials were still meeting with members of the Western press corps. … Read more
CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, by John Cassidy Given how reliably Americans tend to favor promises of plenty, it has been curious to see a president inherit a humming economy and then proceed to gut the federal work force, start a chaotic trade war and celebrate the scarcity … Read more
ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson In Christian theology, original sin begins with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. But Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” chronicles a different fall from grace. The cover … Read more
Twain had a striking look from the time he was young. In early photographs, he can resemble Billy the Kid, then Joe Walsh, then early Jimmy Buffett, then Kurt Vonnegut before emerging as the crinkly, shambolic, mustachioed, bushy-browed, white-linen-suit-wearing sage of his later years. There was something about his eyes — an intensity, a shrewdness. … Read more
Take the Murguia family: Amalia and Alfredo immigrated from a small region in central Mexico to Kansas City, and had seven children, five of whom shared three beds in one of the house’s two bedrooms. Alfred, one of the older children, excelled academically and was the first in his family to enroll in college — … Read more
STATE CHAMP, by Hilary Plum Though the decision to seek an abortion is an inherently private one, walking into an abortion clinic in the United States can be an uncannily public act. A patient may have to dodge protesters trying to block her path to the building, or hide her face as they brandish photos … Read more
FEVER BEACH, by Carl Hiaasen The greater Miami area runs roughly 120 overdeveloped miles from Jupiter down to Homestead, but spans less than 30 at its widest point. This peninsula within a peninsula can claim its share of contemporary novelists, including Karen Russell, Tananarive Due, Jennine Capó Crucet and, for whatever it’s worth, yours truly, … Read more
