High Tech

One night, Hunter runs out into the dark in search of his missing dog; a creature ambushes him, tearing into his arm and leg. His protective best friend, Korean American Gabe, comes to the rescue, fighting off the monster just as he stands up to the bullies who persecute Hunter at school. The bites heal at a supernatural speed, so Hunter doesn’t need medical treatment. But then his period returns in full force for the first time in two years, and his body starts reacting to contact with silver. As Hunter’s body begins to change, he and Gabe join forces with Hunter’s other close friend, Mars (who’s white and Filipino American), to figure out a way to kill the werewolf and cure Hunter before it’s too late. Hunter is a moody protagonist, weighed down by toxic gender norms and internalized transphobia that cause him to make self-destructive decisions. Along with the imminent threat of the werewolf, bisexual Hunter grapples with emerging romantic feelings for Gabe and Mars and transphobic ...

Chen’s full-color photographs, showcasing the ins and outs of the automotive sports world, span more than 400 pages. Clocking in at over 2,500 individual photos, the book unfolds in reverse chronological order. It comprises four sections, beginning with Chen’s most recent collections—“A People’s Movement” (2020-2024) and “Lens on Fire” (2015-2019)—and working backward to conclude with his first five years in the business—“Laying Groundwork” (2005-2009). Some photographs are full page; many are smaller in size and grouped together in a collage depicting a particular car show or race. Included throughout are brief paragraphs that describe the events behind the photos, Chen’s methods, or suggestions for budding sports photographers (“My number one piece of advice for auto enthusiasts is to get off your comfy sofa and go out and find some cool cars in the wild”). The photos reveal a breathtaking talent for capturing movement, like flames bursting from a car’s hood at the Retro Havoc in Ma...

At the center of the narrative, set in the small town of Wintermere, are Sera Linden and Julian Vero, whose bond is revealed less through dialogue than through silence, shared labor, and gestures that skirt definition. Sera is leading a local revitalization project while Julian is undertaking a personal rebuilding task at the chapel.Their companions along the way—bookshop owner Ruth, coffee shop owner Gwen, cafe worker Jane—bring shades of conflict and communal tension, but the narrative’s truest focus is the slow, nearly devotional attention to the space in which they dwell. St. Avila’s chapel emerges not only as backdrop but as a living presence: damaged, tended, and finally restored without spectacle. Lane weaves recurring objects—a compass, sea glass, ash, wildflowers—into a symbolic range that roots the novel’s abstractions in tactile forms. Lane’s prose is lyrical and deliberate, its rhythm closer to liturgy than to plot-driven fiction: Time blurs, and chapters linger in long st...

“Today, race and class remain the most reliable predictors of education achievement in America,” writes Viteritti, adding that, 70 years since the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, “our public schools continue to be segregated.” A professor of public policy at New York’s Hunter College, the author, whose research has been widely published and cited in Supreme Court decisions, has a long history with both American public schools (serving as a senior adviser to the chancellor of the New York City public school system, among other positions) and working as an advocate for school choice. While promoting his vision for school choice, this book also serves as “an extended acknowledgment and note of gratitude” to the theorists (some of whom he ranks among his close friends) who shaped his ideas on school choice. These include Ron Edmonds (a New York educator known for his advocacy on behalf of Black families), Jack Coons (a prominent lawyer and advocate of choice), Diane R...

Ruttenberg takes a poetic sensibility in this dual narrative of both the life of Joey Ramone (née Jeffrey Ross Hyman) and the birth of punk music itself. Born sick, he grew up to be ungainly, with thick glasses; his Jewish heritage also marked him as an outsider. “Soon enough bullies—UGH! ICK! YUCK! ACHHH!—spotted this thin, clumsy, incredibly tall kid and, with [the] devil’s instinct, smelled difference.” Ramone discovered rock ’n’ roll, yet by the time he was grown, “rock music sounded like it was being made by the parents.” He co-founded the Ramones in 1974, and here the book makes an elegant detour, exploring punk, its origins, and its greater significance. With eloquent wordplay, Ruttenberg gives readers an intimate sense of Joey Ramone’s life and times without ever tipping into fictionalized details or faux dialogue. Even the lack of backmatter (nary a timeline or bibliography in sight) cannot overshadow the frenzied fun on the page. The bold colors and sheer delight of Schreibe...

Eager to cultivate his image, Johannes Brahms destroyed much of his early work before it could get out into the world. The composer felt the same about his correspondence. “A person has to be careful about writing letters,” he told a friend. “One day they get printed!” The man had a point. This enjoyable collection—part of a Letters for the Ages series—assembles missives from musicians that date as far back as the sixth century. Brahms would be happy to learn that none of his writing is in the book. Among the entries, however, is an 1878 letter addressed to him; it’s by Clara Schumann, the fellow composer who had great affection for her friend (the feeling was reciprocal, although the relationship probably remained platonic). The letter is illuminating because it shows how much Schumann advised Brahms on his scores, with detailed (and gentle) suggestions: “In the C major piece I wish you would use the charming opening phrase again at the repeat, it would not be difficult, would it?” S...

On September 13, 2022, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini for having too much hair protruding from her hijab (“Members of the Gasht-e Ershad  then grabbed Amini and began forcing her into their van”). Three days later, she was dead in Kasra Hospital, another victim of the country’s re-education centers. Photos of Amini in the hospital showed severe trauma to her face and head, and the images quickly went viral on Instagram and other platforms. At her funeral, her mother rejected claims that her daughter had violated the law. Women ripped off their headscarves in defiance, and mourners’ wails turned into chants against the regime. Despite strict internet controls, videos circulated worldwide, and Iranians of different ethnicities, faiths, and political leanings rallied together, mounting one of the boldest challenges to theocracy in decades. Harounoff, the international spokesperson for Israel at the UN, places Amini’s death in the larger context of Iran’s...

Now in his late-30s, author Anglade notes in the book’s opening lines that he “had a relatively good life, despite being born in one of the poorest countries in the world.” As recounted in the memoir’s harrowing opening chapters, the author’s childhood home was broken into twice by armed burglars during the night, prompting his family to frequently sleep at their church to avoid zenglendos (armed criminals). While he deeply valued Haiti’s rich culture, even having competitions with his friends to see who could read Haitian novels the fastest, he also had family members whom he visited in the United States, where he developed an affinity for the U.S., especially its cartoons and Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets. Ultimately, he migrated to the U.S., devoting his efforts to education and eventually receiving a Ph.D. in applied economics from the University of Florida. Apart from academic research, Anglade spent much of his postgraduate life engaging with Haitian politics, public policy, and...

In this heartwarming adventure story, McCarty takes readers on a modern-day romp in the woods of Boone, North Carolina. Ten-year-old Thomas has come with his family, who present white, to stay near Canaan Woods with Aunt Cecilia, a painter, in the home she and his mom grew up in. It’s a chance for Mom, who’s in remission from cancer, to recuperate. Through his mother’s stories and his visits to the woods, Thomas finds a world full of fairies, trolls, and, most importantly, a stone tiger. Thomas’ singing brings the tiger to life, and the two develop a bond. The relationship between Thomas and his mother, who suffers a setback in her health, centers on stories and the loss of imagination as we grow older. Mom’s tales of Greenwood, the name she and Aunt Cecilia gave the woods as children, are interspersed throughout. Although long-winded details bog down the text, the work features a lovely blend of reality mixed with the fantastical, keeping readers grounded while embracing whimsy. The ...

A clearing opens in the forest around a mighty fallen tree. As it begins to decompose, the tree attracts life from far and wide. First, insects such as alpine longhorn beetles and carpenter ants arrive, feeding on and tunneling through the dead wood. Fungi slowly transform parts of the tree into humus, a valuable food source for nearby plants. Birds and small mammals burrow in the tree’s hollows and use the fallen trunk for safe passage across a stream. With the help of these many forest organisms, the decaying tree becomes essential to the forest’s biodiversity and a great example of symbiosis. This Italian import is packed to the roots with in-depth info about the flora and fauna that interact with a forest’s fallen trees, as well as a segment about the human impact on forest health and tips on how to promote biodiversity in readers’ own backyards. Manageable blocks of text are peppered with scientific words that are bolded and defined, making the information accessible to the upper...

Seelie and Isolde are still in the thick of the action, planning their escape from the ambitious shape-shifter, Leira Wildfall, who captured them and their companions, Raze and Olani, at the close of the first book. Seelie continues to conceal both the presence of Gossamer (the faerie she’s trapped within herself) and the shocking truth of Isolde’s changeling identity. Romantic sparks fly for both Latine-presenting sisters—Seelie with Raze, who reads white, and Isolde with Olani, who’s cued Black. The narration alternates between the girls’ first-person perspectives. In Isolde’s point-of-view chapters, she ponders her role in the wake of her sister’s newfound power and independence, and readers gain fresh insights into her dynamic inner life. As Housman shares in the author’s note, Isolde’s viewpoint is inspired in part by her own sister’s experiences with ADHD, a form of neurodivergence that’s often underdiagnosed in women. Isolde has always been, unlike Seelie, “the normal child. T...

The scent of a generous wedge of Swiss cheese enraptures a small rodent narrator. The mouse asserts that “everyone should take risks” and that cheese is worth risking “everything!” for. But this chunk sits on a restaurant table, and as our hero darts forth, people panic, and a broom-wielding headwaiter ousts the protagonist. So, “another day without cheese.” Then a poster depicting a big round golden moon convinces the mouse that Earth’s satellite is really the legendary “magical cheese mountain.” The protagonist begins planning before making blueprints, gathering supplies, building a rocket, sewing a spacesuit, testing, and setting forth. Surprisingly, the mouse turns out to be an ace welder and electrician. (No tiny safety glasses, though.) In mere months, everything, including a whole command center, is complete, and our hero rockets to a fanciful playland on a golden surface, where other rodent astronauts have gathered. Is the moon truly made of cheese? With all heads encased in c...

One night, lowly 8-year-old Agni Kazirian sees the apparition of his ancestor Anton, the “last child of the Dragon God.” Anton believes that the boy will someday reunite the once-powerful Kazia—a former empire that’s now split into the Solantian Empire and the Blevenian Kingdom. Such a reunion will likely entail great bloodshed. Twenty years later, Agni, who sports blue hair and dragon wings and belongs to a dragon tribe, is the Lord Guardian of the East. When he was the high general, he led Solantia to victory in war against Blevenia and the Kingdom of Avicia. He now defends his empire with snares set up throughout the Spires, a part of the Borderlands between Solantia and Blevenia. When Anton finally tells Agni that it’s time for his “rebirth,” Agni champions the rise of Kazia while in a hall of lords; he’s also betrothed to Duchess Sara Ristana. Some deem his rally “traitorous,” and, sure enough, Agni suspects a plot to kill him. So he flees with his colossal bodyguard, Alexander, ...

College dropout Sam became obsessed with supernatural lore following the death of their mother. Sage, who’s grounded in science and reason, has little patience for ghost stories. Their childhood friend Kora, who mourns the family’s loss as if it were her own, joins Sage’s search without hesitation. Alongside them are Kora’s new maybe-girlfriend, Hunter; Kora’s ex-boyfriend, Connor; and Noah, the young library employee who helped Sam with his research and quietly harbors feelings for him. As the group ventures deeper into the woods, their search for Sam brings some of their own struggles with grief to the surface. Sage, who used to find solace in swimming, turned to drinking and quit the swim team. She also lives with ADHD, a detail that’s woven into her character without defining her. Kora’s childhood home is up for sale, and she’s soon heading to art school in New York on her own. The characters are funny and supportive of one another, and the novel offers a thoughtful examination of...

Poor Karen Elmes is already dead when readers meet Viv Klein, a down-on-her-luck photographer who is skewered on social media for snapping the deceased woman’s photograph after stumbling upon her body in a forlorn back alley. Abby Katz is an intrepid reporter dispatched by the LA Times to profile the hard-pressed young photographer. Just what makes her tick? And why did she do what she did? Though conflicted about her actions in the back alley, Viv nevertheless decides that a weird job offer to photograph a wealthy man’s recently deceased mother is just too lucrative to pass up. After all, she’s told, death masks go back to King Tut’s time and even became a proto-social media phenomenon in the 19th century when good folks felt that using the novel invention of photography was a great way to preserve their dearly departed loved ones at the moment of death. (“The Victorians got all creepy about it when photography became more affordable, and they would take death portraits of their chil...

Mechanic was 14 years old when his mother died of cancer. Before she died, the family took a trip to the Bahamas so she could undergo an experimental treatment. By the time they got home, though, it was clear that the treatment had not worked, and that his mother was on the verge of death. When she did die, Jesse, devastated, was unable to function. He neglected his schoolwork, not because he wasn’t interested in learning, but because he couldn’t concentrate—a situation that may be partially a result of “ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and intrusive thoughts,” all of which are issues that persisted throughout his adulthood. Eventually, Mechanic found a community of fellow “bad kids,” all of whom “went through something” that “dented our innocence.” Mechanic is convinced that these peers, along with punk and hip-hop, saved his life. After high school, the author worked at a bookstore, cultivating a love of literature and eventually graduating from college with honors. Years later,...

The author, who appears throughout the illustrations with light-brown skin and long, dark brown hair, introduces herself as Jess. She’s a welcoming guide, who opens by describing her goal of “normalizing the conversation about porn,” which “nearly 3 in 4 teens” have been exposed to. Throughout the book, she encourages readers to discuss the contents with a trusted adult. The nine chapters cover a broad range of topics: “What Is Porn?”, “Porn Usage,” “Body Image,” “Anatomy,” “Consent and Communication,” “Sex Education,” “Safer Sex,” “Is It Assault?”, and “Can We Use Porn Safely?” Melendez explains how the male gaze, fetishization of people, and gender stereotypes are problematic. Workbook elements that allow readers to actively interact with the material, including checklists, writing prompts, and puzzles, elevate this work. The overview of safe sex focuses primarily on barrier methods and uses gender-inclusive language. A segment on media literacy adds a thoughtful and important piece...

Joseph, co-founder of the Games for Change festival, is perfectly suited to explore Stephen Sondheim’s little-known lifelong interest in all sorts of games, mostly word driven. The composer believed that his parents’ divorce pushed him toward games and music to seek order out of chaos. He collected all kinds of board games and put them up on his apartment’s walls. Sadly, many were lost in a fire. Parlor games were also a Sondheim favorite, attended by many of his friends. His Murder Game inspired the song “Finishing the Hat.” In the 1960s he’d occasionally appear on TV game shows like The Match Game and Password , always anxious to win. He was also New York magazine’s puzzle editor. Joseph goes into great detail outlining the musician’s treasure hunts. “Tackling one of Sondheim’s puzzles can feel like being lost in the face of an unknown language,” the author writes, but the 2013 City Center Treasure Hunt offers insights, as it was “thoroughly documented” by Maria Seremetis, whom So...

Jordan McClellan is the youngest child of Rachel and Eamon, two Oklahoma farmers at the turn of the 20th century. His siblings, Danny and Becky, are both respected athletes—Danny is a draft pick for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, and Becky’s the star of her high school basketball team. Jordan, however, is more academically inclined and is at odds with his emotionally distant and abusive father. “I was fifteen when my father hit me,” Logan writes early on, beginning a story that captures the tension of the fraught family dynamic in simple, clear prose. After graduating high school as valedictorian and heading to college on scholarship, Jordan inadvertently causes an accident that injures both his father and his brother, ending his brother’s baseball career. Despite a promising career teaching literature at Oklahoma City University, guilt and depression lead Jordan to the bottle, and after a fateful night at a speakeasy, he gets behind the wheel of a car and causes the death of ...

“On a fraught, decade-long journey of dislocation,” Adams researched how queer people, mostly emigrants, survived and managed to thrive in the Persian Gulf States, where homosexuality is illegal and often punishable with hefty fines, a potential 10-year prison sentence, deportation, torture, and even death. In 2010, with a degree in Middle Eastern history from New York University, Adams relocated to the United Arab Emirates and began working as an academic researcher on cultural traditions. As a gay man, what he soon uncovered and focused more closely on was archiving life stories of queer people living in the UAE. Among the first interviews the author conducted was one with a Dubai-based, Pakistani Muslim competitive wrestler named Mohammed and his dedicated, demanding coach, Prashant, an Indian Hindu. Through hushed inquiry, Adams discovered that both men were lovers, having cast aside their national and religious differences to embrace love for each other. Through a mesmerizing suc...

It’s 1978, and Jon Fenton, the courier for New York City’s notorious Flying Dragons gang, is on the run. After getting wind of gang leader Sifu Qiu’s plan to kill him, he took the money he was supposed to deliver and faked his own death. However, the gang still wants a measure of revenge, and they target Jon’s adult sister, Kim, who ends up in the hospital after a brutal assault. After she recovers, she takes martial-arts self-defense lessons from her childhood friend, Ethan Wolf, who owns an acupuncture and kung fu studio; the two bond over their mutual grief over Jon’s absence. As years go by, Jon attempts anonymity but still manages to get into trouble halfway around the world in China: “The gang exchanged glances before lunging. Jon’s training took over. He ducked a punch. His movements had the grace of a dancer and the power of a charging bull.” There, he fights for justice, and he forges a surprising career as a martial arts movie star. Along the way, he continues to grapple wit...

“‘Un­canny, the way you look like him. Bob Dylan. You know his music?’” As soon as you encounter the premise of Sussman’s debut novel, you will surely Google him, and see that his resemblance to the man who wrote “Girl From the North Country” is somewhere beyond uncanny. Sussman has also published an article in Harper’s Magazine that explains the real-life basis of the novel—his mother’s year-long relationship with Dylan and a later meeting nine months before he was born. He magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel chronicling the death of the narrator Evan’s mother from cancer, a period during which she finally shares more of the truth about her connection with Dylan, as well as other stories of her life, some terrible and some amazing. All of this has been completely hidden from Evan till now, despite the fact that he and June were very close in his childhood. Their emotional intimacy was built on play-acting and storytelling, on King Arthur a...

A woman is drawn into a disagreement with a stranger over the stigma of narcissism. A man grows threatened by his neighbor’s newly raised Gadsden flag—the kind that says “Don’t Tread on Me”—and decides to confront him. A couple enacts a scheme to prevent a man from parking his truck in front of their house. These are some premises of Pourciau’s fourth collection of short stories, mostly depicting the first-person perspectives of aggrieved, suspicious, emotionally isolated people obsessing over others’ hidden thoughts. Pourciau’s oeuvre focuses almost exclusively on minor disruptions to our daily routines that have the potential to drive us mad. The longest story—one of the best and most complete entries, “Invade”—describes a woman incessantly pestering her new neighbors for an invitation to help them redecorate, eliciting increasingly curt and hostile evasions. Averaging around four pages each, most of the entries are incredibly slight and largely absent of closure, suspending readers...

Monono is a heart-shaped crayon whose colorful swirls incorporate the full spectrum of the rainbow. Being of a different shape from the other crayons (“Monono is one of a kind”), Monono is stored on the far side of the classroom’s art shelf and is regularly overlooked by the students. Worse, Monono is shunned by the other, conventional crayons, all of whom have their established niches. Monono’s colors start to drain away, leeched by loneliness and sorrow. Then, a new student arrives in class: a dark-skinned girl named Chiro. Chiro, like Monono, is a loner without a group…until they’re paired by default and Chiro starts drawing marvelous rainbow pictures. Suddenly, Monono is in demand, and both Chiro and Monono find themselves noticed by their peers. Bailey narrates Monono’s story in straightforward, non-rhyming prose, presented in an easily legible, faux-handwritten font upon speckled-blue backdrops reflective of Monono’s growing sadness. Marlon’s digital illustrations capture the br...

She’s bookish and friendless and barely speaks in public. Her sole companions are the imaginary dragonflies that silently guide and encourage her. Faced with the prospect of a yearlong move to New York with her parents and brothers, Guppie finds her anxiety manifesting as a frightening dragon only she can see. Inspired by a teacher’s advice, Guppie draws up a checklist of heroic qualities in characters from books and sets herself the task of acquiring them. But over the course of their road trip, Guppie discovers that becoming a hero and standing up to that dragon might be harder than she thought. Can she really become “Gupta the Brave” if she’s hiding from her “so cheap, it’s embarrassing” parents the fact that she got her brothers involved in a social media contest to win coveted cell phones? The brisk pace falters in the middle, and an abrupt transformation at the end feels unconvincing, but Deen’s engaging tale explores finding courage and embracing challenges, as well as noting t...

Silas, a trapper, discovers a hidden altar from an ancient religion in a tunnel deep within the frozen ground. His prayers to the Hearthlord summon Senya, a girl with healing powers, who emerges from a supernatural portal. He becomes a priest—Father Silas—and as the religion grows, angels known as the Hearthborn arrive through the portal to free the Hearthlord from the tundra, leaving Senya behind in the cold. Meanwhile, in her homeland, a gradual shift is taking place from religious to political power—and warfare. Senya returns home to serve the Hearthlord, teaming up with Siegfried, a dispossessed soldier from Feracht House, and Nell, a rogue princess from Aesterland. The novel opens with plodding worldbuilding framed by an origin story and little exploration of characters’ emotions before eventually exploding into the horrific devastation of war. Shifting third-person points of view provide detailed backstories and clues about the central characters’ roles as victims of political p...

Stylist and fashion influencer Clio Barnes has been estranged from her mother for years, as have her sisters. When their mother dies, she leaves her house to Leda, Daphne, and Clio. The elder two want nothing to do with the house, but Clio has visions of renovating the place, turning her DIY into content, and flipping it for a profit. One more detail: The house is possessed by a demon. In So Thirsty (2024), Harrison wrote a book about vampires that was also a novel about best friends trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Here, Harrison mines the potential of the haunted house to excavate the abuse that Clio and her sisters suffered as children. Clio is a terrific protagonist. She’s sharp and funny and a little less self-aware than she thinks she is. As she tries to reconcile her own memories with those of her family—including her mother, who left behind an annotated copy of the book she wrote about living in a demon-plagued split-level in the suburbs—and questions her own...

The author entered the Swiss military as a young man, and his time as a soldier greatly affected how he later chose to run his business (“here’s the thing about a country maniacally focused on executing at an elite level for its very survival: there’s a lot you can learn from that approach”). In these pages, Goodner assembles the tools he used to build his own company and highlights their connections to his military service. Incorporating personal stories of both failure and success, the author also offers case studies in each chapter of other businesses and colleagues, detailing how they overcame various problems. Each chapter starts with a difficulty rating and describes the ways in which his military service taught him skills he then transferred to the business world. His topics include an employee’s first day at a company, how to use existing employees to recruit for open positions, how checklists are boring but helpful tools, and how clear communication at all levels of a busines...

Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle. Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. ...

In his boisterous and breezy memoir, Sheen starts with his birth, when he was nearly strangled by his umbilical cord, and goes on to a childhood in and around Los Angeles, where he made home videos with other showbiz kids. Along with his mother and three siblings, he frequently traveled to locations where his father, Martin Sheen, was filming, notably the set of Apocalypse Now . In an account laden with expletives and endearingly weird spelling choices (“dood,” “kool”), some of the actor’s most riveting chapters evoke his own stints on film sets, particularly his brutal experiences during the filming of Oliver Stone’s Platoon , in which the author starred. Though he went on to play parts in many more movies and in TV shows like Two and a Half Men , he turned his attention primarily to booze, drugs, gambling on sports, and encounters with sex workers. Don’t look for the usual redemption narrative here. Though Sheen does spend the last few pages of the book on what he says have been eig...

At once accessible and unexpectedly engaging, Barrett’s first book distills often complex constitutional ideas into a clear account of the court’s work and the philosophy that shapes her approach. Barrett traces her path from law clerk to 103rd associate justice in 2020, while also demystifying the court’s daily operations. She emphasizes collegiality—“The success of a multi-member court rides on the ability to disagree respectfully”—although this sentiment seems to go against her rare rebuke of fellow Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (over Jackson’s criticism of President Trump’s attempt to ban birthright citizenship). At the core is Barrett’s explanation of originalism. “I’m not an originalist because I think that history yields easy answers or prevents bad judging,” she writes. “I’m an originalist because I think that it’s the right way to think about law.” She broadens her account to explore the origins of the Constitution, the reasoning behind landmark cases, and the importance of r...

Famed couturier Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) is celebrated in a sumptuous volume of photographs drawn from an exhibition at the Arles Photography Festival 2025 and the holdings of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Photos include portraits of Saint Laurent; shots of couture, ready-to-wear fashion, and runway shows; Polaroids, personal photographs (even one of the designer as a baby), and contact sheets. Commentary by art historians, curatorial specialists, and museum staff testify to Saint Laurent’s intimate relationship with photography. “My greatest asset,” he once remarked, “has been the eye I have for the time I live in and for the art of my time.” As Christoph Wiesner, director of the Arles Photography Festival, observes, for Saint Laurent, “working with photographers was a means of exploring his own limits, of giving his clothes another life beyond the purely material one.” Saint Laurent had been assistant to Christian Dior at the time of Dior’s sudden death in 1957; immediat...

For a few years in the late 1980s, Gibson was everywhere. The singer released her first two albums, Out of the Blue and Electric Youth , when she was a teenager; both were massive hits. But the music industry is cruel, and while she went on to put out more records and pursued an acting career, she never regained the fame that she had experienced before graduating from high school. Gibson’s memoir tells the story of growing up lower-middle class in Long Island, her single-minded pursuit of a career in the performing arts, and her early success, masterminded by her “ballbuster” mother-turned-manager. Her early fame came at a cost to her mental health, she writes, leading to a string of anxiety attacks: “If anyone out there has experienced them, you’ll know what it’s like: you literally think you are dying, unsure where your next breath is coming from.” Gibson writes candidly about her health struggles—she also has Lyme disease—as well as her fraught relationship with her mother, who on...

After attending a John Prine concert in New Orleans in 2016—“He might have been an aging Mafia don, or an organizer for the longshoreman’s union, playing a Gibson jumbo guitar that looked almost as big as he was”—veteran author Piazza ( City of Refuge , Devil Sent the Rain , etc.) profiled the singer-songwriter for Oxford American magazine. The article—also titled “Living in the Present With John Prine,” led to a friendship as well as a plan to produce Prine’s memoir, which was cut short when Prine died in 2020 from complications caused by Covid-19. He was 73. Piazza repurposed the materials he had gathered to produce this moving work. Equal parts profile, oral history, and on-the-road adventure, the book recounts the artist’s working-class background in suburban Chicago, his family connection to rural Kentucky, his early success with Atlantic Records, and the decision to co-found the label Oh Boy Records. Often writing in the first person and present tense, Piazza recounts his time ...

Deina, an indentured servant from the House of Hades, can sever the body from the soul. It’s a useful skill to help the dying enter the Underworld, and performing these services subtracts years from her 40-year servitude. However, Deina dreams of buying her freedom and that of her best friend, Chryse. In this reimagined Orphic myth, Orpheus arrives in Iolkos with an offer to members of the House of Hades who passed his trials: Enter the Underworld and bring back his wife, Eurydice, in exchange for freedom and gold. Deina, who accepts the challenge, is ready to face her fate, but far from being a sweet, tortured musician, Orpheus is self-obsessed and cruel. In this brutal, patriarchal ancient Greek world, Deina survives gender-based harassment and injustices. Despite it all, she proves her resilience under pressure. In the Underworld, she encounters a mysterious man who helps her in her tasks, little suspecting that she’ll discover much more about him—and herself—while she’s there. Eve...

An introductory note makes clear that while Blake is drawn to pet themes and personally salient motifs, readers should expect to find neither thesis nor throughline connecting the vignettes ahead. Instead, the eight sections that follow are entirely unrelated to one another, each filled with images that invite onlookers to both occupy the world as it’s been reimagined and construct its context. In “Trip Hazards,” clumsy bumblers topple mid-fall across four full-page spreads, while “Ten Things You Really Cannot Manage Without” features slice-of-life essentials like a “beach hut” and a “useful box.” “Deliveries From Elsewhere” features suitably off-the-wall scenarios (characters ride grotesque monsters or pilot flying machines), whereas those in “Feet in the Water” prove perfectly ordinary. An art exhibition of sorts, this work is an introspective companion to the myriad others Blake has built his storied career on; the contents of this volume range widely, sometimes silly, often weird....

Austrian writer Freudenthaler’s new novel follows the inner lives of two obsessive people as they face an Earth being ravaged by climate change. One is an unnamed journalist who’s struggling with her inability to dream (“Maybe there’s just no place for dreams anymore”)—and beginning to isolate herself from her friends, family, and an increasingly unrecognizable world. The other is her friend Ulrich, a scientist suffering from insomnia who spends his days poring over wildfire data and his nights cataloging his own sleep data. While discussing a potential career change with his sleep doctor, Ulrich says he can neither live with or without the flames: “We became pyrophytes long ago. We can’t live without fire and it will destroy us.” Though his job—like the fires—is ruining him, he can’t tear himself away. When the narrator leaves the city for the countryside, she becomes increasingly lost in her own thoughts and drawn to nature—which is rapidly shifting and changing before her eyes. At ...

This affirming narrative begins in the wake of a Horrible Day. As well-meaning grown-ups suggest just how fortunate the protagonist is to have survived the ordeal, our elementary-aged narrator balks, cloaked in an anxiety that clings like a sticky second skin. The child feels safest with pal Alex, another Horrible Day survivor. Together, they occupy a space free from talk of luck or silver linings, processing the experience without pressure and remembering those lost to the catastrophic violence. When the protagonist hears tell of another Horrible Day, the family attends a protest where they join countless, similarly affected Others, united in the fight for action. In their company, the youngster makes a liberating discovery—that a community wrought from Horrible Days is a community nonetheless and that solidarity can make the days that follow tragedy a little more tenable. Adelman’s text celebrates resilience without diminishing its power with pity nor demanding that young people rus...

They’re not exactly enemies, but despite sharing a boat on the Cambridge University rowing team, they don’t quite see eye to eye, either. After they lose an important race due to George’s bad call, Lucas is overheard criticizing his teammate, an American student imported for his athletic prowess, saying he’ll never be able to pass his exams. Unfortunately for George, that’s true. And unfortunately for both of them, they’re the only two rowers studying economics. Lucas has no motivation to help George until the hapless himbo stops a very drunk Lucas from embarrassing himself in front of Amir, the boy he’s been crushing on all year. With his defenses down, Lucas proposed a deal: He’ll help George pass his exams if George helps Lucas land Amir. Initially, Lucas assumes they’ll have to cheat, but as the two grow closer he realizes that George has been underestimated and is smarter than anyone gives him credit for. As George is teaching a very shy Lucas the art of seduction, the two men sh...