Book Review

In “The Singularity Is Nearer,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil reckons with a world dominated by artificial intelligence (good) and his own mortality (bad).

Frederick Seidel’s 19th book, “So What,” is filled with politics, disease, luxury and provocation. At almost 90, he’s one of our best contemporary poets.

Rather than bemoan pop culture’s most divisive genre, Emily Nussbaum spends time with the creators, the stars and the victims of the decades-long effort to generate buzz.

He elevated many of France’s most provocative writers through his publishing house, La Fabrique, but he made his greatest mark as a politically engaged, and strolling, historian of Paris.

Two decades after his death, a collection of over 800 works that the first president of Senegal owned is moving from France to Dakar.

A massive, mysterious grizzly takes on symbolic weight in Julia Phillips’s moody and affecting second novel.

A literary critic, essayist and author, he was a leading voice among revisionist skeptics who saw Freud as a charlatan and psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience.

Richard Hatch gave up a career as a physicist to become a magician — and a one-man historical preservation society dedicated to a German author killed in the Holocaust.

Summer is here! Try this short quiz about books that happen to be set in popular vacation destinations.

“The New Breadline,” by Jean-Martin Bauer, a veteran food aid worker, chronicles a growing problem that should not exist — along with the harmful policies that have exacerbated it.

Tracy O’Neill’s memoir, “Woman of Interest,” recounts her yearlong quest, which culminates in a trip to Korea.

With her new book, “Children of Anguish and Anarchy,” Adeyemi is wrapping up her best-selling Legacy of Orïsha series. The journey hasn’t been easy.

A dinner party at the other woman’s house; the evening before a jail sentence.

After getting her start by self-publishing, Freida McFadden is now the fastest selling thriller writer in the United States.

Starring an undergraduate student at Oxford, Rosalind Brown’s debut novel is exquisitely attuned to the thrill and boredom of academic life.

Santiago Jose Sanchez’ debut novel, “Hombrecito,” follows a young immigrant as he grows up in the United States, struggling to identify with a masculinity he’s never felt and a country he never knew.

In “The Friday Afternoon Club,” the actor and director recalls his years growing up around performers, writers and the Hollywood set.

After an $80 million expansion, the Folger Shakespeare Library is reopening with a more welcoming approach — and all 82 of its First Folios on view.

This week's selection includes titles by Gabrielle Zevin, Peace Adzo Medie, Patrick Mackie and more.

In her latest book, Olivia Laing makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.

For young magazine readers with literary pretensions, it wasn’t just our best option; it was our only option.

“Contemporary Art Underground” showcases hundreds of artworks commissioned by the M.T.A., by artists like Alex Katz, Kiki Smith and Vik Muniz.

He turned “an insignificant trade house” into a powerhouse, publishing best sellers like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “All Creatures Great and Small.”

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

“The material that he uses for the songs is powerfully moving, involving his own personal losses,” the 88-year-old poet says. Also name-checked in “So What”: an Italian motorcycle magnate.

In “Adventures in Volcanoland,” the geologist Tamsin Mather takes us on a global and historical investigation of her life’s passion.

Across two new books, the ideal of a global free market buckles under pressure from protesters, politicians of all stripes and the Covid pandemic.

In her memoir, “Pets and the City,” Amy Attas reflects on three decades of caring for animals (and, by extension, humans) right in their own homes.

As a journalist and later as a Yale professor, she provided the intellectual tools to help actors, directors and audiences understand challenging theatrical work.

She received a diagnosis of Stage 4 breast cancer late in her second pregnancy and described her experience in a book, “Little Earthquakes: A Memoir.”

Andrew O’Hagan’s ambitious state-of-England novel finds a cosseted academic facing up to the hard lives and ethical shortcuts he’d prefer to ignore.

In Munir Hachemi’s novel “Living Things,” four young men seek adventure for “literary capital” and find exploitation.

Is the Mob Museum on your list? The writer and illustrator sees his new guide to North America’s museums as a way to help families plan their summer vacations.

In “The Indispensable Right,” Jonathan Turley argues that the First Amendment has been deeply compromised from the start.

In “The Language Puzzle,” the archaeologist Steven Mithen asks exactly how our species started speaking.

In her new novel, “Sandwich,” Catherine Newman explores the aches and joys of midlife via one family’s summer week at the beach.

In “A Place of Our Own,” June Thomas considers “six spaces that shaped queer women’s culture.”

“Same as It Ever Was,” by Claire Lombardo, is a 500-page, multigenerational examination of the ties that bind.

This quick quiz challenges you to identify a film’s source material based on a photo. Click here to play!

Our columnist on three twisty new tales of murder.