Tony Horwitz earned his Pulitzer Prize in 1995, reporting for The Wall Street Journal on the bleak and awful working conditions of America’s low-wage earners — embedding himself in a poultry plant alongside those toiling on the risky, gruesome “disassembly lines,” and capturing the harrowing monotony of the silent “cage” where workers opened envelopes for […]

No one becomes “not racist,” despite a tendency by Americans to identify themselves that way. We can only strive to be “antiracist” on a daily basis, to continually rededicate ourselves to the lifelong task of overcoming our country’s racist heritage. We learn early the racist notion that white people have more because they are more; […]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMESA Life in War, Law, and IdeasBy Stephen Budiansky This year is a propitious time for Stephen Budiansky’s new biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Exactly a century ago, dissenting in the case of Abrams v. United States, Holmes invented the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas, single-handedly laying the groundwork for […]

New this week: MORE NEWS TOMORROW, by Susan Richards Shreve. (Norton, $25.95.) On her 70th birthday, the protagonist of Shreve’s latest novel sets out to uncover whether her father really did kill her mother 66 years earlier, as prosecutors claimed. THE ROYAL SOCIETY: And the Invention of Modern Science, by Adrian Tinniswood. (Basic Books, $26.) […]

There may have been much criticism over Season Eight of the HBO show. However, it always knew how it was going to end, even if many fans were not happy about how it got there. George RR Martin had laid his plans back in the opening book of A Song of Ice and Fire. After […]

L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” By Lucasta Miller By any measure, Letitia Elizabeth Landon led an eventful life. Born in 1802 to shabby genteel parents, Landon was an ascending star in literary London, a tantalizing blend of Romantic feeling and proto-Victorian self-promoting prowess. She died […]

Those who forget history are … in luck, actually. This week’s recommended reading includes refreshers on everything from the settling of Polynesia to Brooklyn’s past as a queer enclave to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868. There’s art history, in María Gainza’s autofiction about an Argentine critic; and literary history, in Casey Cep’s riveting […]

Anya Ulinich is a writer and illustrator. Her most recent book is “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel,” a graphic novel. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. Source: Read Full Article