A Horror Story Starring the Monstrous Men of Camelot
Maureen Callahan’s lurid “Ask Not” paints the Kennedys as mad, bad and dangerous for women to know.
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![In Maureen Callahan’s telling, Jacqueline Kennedy was terrorized not just by her husband’s infidelities, but by the judgments of fellow Kennedy women. Left to right: Jacqueline Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith and Eunice Kennedy Shriver.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/02/books/review/02Callahan-Review/02Callahan-Review-thumbLarge.jpg?auto=webp)
![In Maureen Callahan’s telling, Jacqueline Kennedy was terrorized not just by her husband’s infidelities, but by the judgments of fellow Kennedy women. Left to right: Jacqueline Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith and Eunice Kennedy Shriver.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/02/books/review/02Callahan-Review/02Callahan-Review-threeByTwoMediumAt2X.jpg?auto=webp)
Maureen Callahan’s lurid “Ask Not” paints the Kennedys as mad, bad and dangerous for women to know.
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The books in this month’s column have something in common: unforgettable main characters.
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The journalist Richard Behar communicated extensively with the disgraced financier. His rigorous if irreverent book acknowledges his subject’s humanity.
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Joy Williams distills much learning — from philosophy, religion and history — into 99 stories about the guy who takes your soul.
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Book Bans Are on the Rise. But Fear of Fiction Is Nothing New.
Nearly 2,400 years ago, Plato worried that stories could corrupt susceptible minds. Moral panics over fiction have been common ever since.
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How Much Do You Know About the American Revolution?
This short quiz tests your knowledge of certain Revolutionary War events and books about the era.
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A Summer Home in Maine With Centuries-Old Secrets — and a Ghost
J. Courtney Sullivan’s “The Cliffs” is a haunted house mystery steeped in historical context.
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Shay Youngblood, Influential Black Author and Playwright, Dies at 64
She wrote memorably about her upbringing by a circle of maternal elders and the life lessons they imparted, and of her yearning for the mother she lost.
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A Guide to Ismail Kadare’s Books
Kadare received the inaugural International Booker Prize in 2005. In his books, the prolific Albanian author offered a window into the psychology of oppression. Here’s where to start.
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Jailhouse Correspondence Gives Bernie Madoff the ‘Final Word’
The journalist Richard Behar communicated extensively with the disgraced financier. His rigorous if irreverent book acknowledges his subject’s humanity.
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Who Was Harriet Tubman? A Historian Sifts the Clues.
A brisk new biography by the National Book Award-winning historian Tiya Miles aims to restore the iconic freedom fighter to human scale.
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Have You Heard the One About the School for Stand-Up Comedy?
In “The Material,” Camille Bordas imagines the anxious hotbed where the perils of being a college student and the perils of being funny meet.
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Anthony Fauci, a Hero to Some and a Villain to Others, Keeps His Cool
In a frank but measured memoir, “On Call,” the physician looks back at a career bookended by two public health crises: AIDS and Covid-19.
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Millions of Americans Watched ‘The Apprentice.’ Now We Are Living It.
As a new book by Ramin Setoodeh shows, Donald Trump brought the vulgar theatrics he honed on TV to his life in politics.
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She wrote memorably about her upbringing by a circle of maternal elders and the life lessons they imparted, and of her yearning for the mother she lost.
By Penelope Green
Kadare received the inaugural International Booker Prize in 2005. In his books, the prolific Albanian author offered a window into the psychology of oppression. Here’s where to start.
By Amelia Nierenberg
This short quiz tests your knowledge of certain Revolutionary War events and books about the era.
By J. D. Biersdorfer
Often compared to Orwell and Kafka, he walked a political tightrope with works that offered veiled criticism of his totalitarian state.
By Rusha Haljuci
Ikbal and Idries Shah delighted London society with their romantic tales of the East. The only problem? They made them up.
By Robyn Creswell
Nearly 2,400 years ago, Plato worried that stories could corrupt susceptible minds. Moral panics over fiction have been common ever since.
By Lyta Gold
The writer and director, famous for making theatergoers squirm in their seats, says he feels most at home wherever the outsiders gather in his native city.
By Megan McCrea
The books in this month’s column have something in common: unforgettable main characters.
By Sarah Weinman
In a memoir and a novel, the characters deal with grief by singing in front of strangers.
In “All the Worst Humans,” Phil Elwood recounts a career spent engineering headlines for some of the world’s villains.
By Jim Windolf
In “Swimming Pretty,” Vicki Valosik connects the evolution of an unlikely sport with the century-long struggle of women to be taken seriously in the water.
By Jennifer Schuessler
In Fernanda Trías’s novel “Pink Slime,” one woman holds out in her town after an environmental disaster, trapped in a limbo of indecision.
By Lydia Millet
Selected paperbacks from the Book Review, including titles by Darrin Bell, Maggie Smith, David Friend and more.
By Shreya Chattopadhyay
Bullwinkel’s debut novel sheds light on the culture of youth women’s boxing through an ensemble cast of complicated characters. It packs a punch.
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Our columnist reviews June’s horror releases.
By Gabino Iglesias
From silly rhymes to lively sound effects to stealthily-building suspense, these old standbys and new classics have something for everyone.
By Elisabeth Egan
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
The watercolor cover art for the first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was painted in 1996 by a recent art school graduate from Britain who was working at a bookstore.
By John Yoon
The author of “Funny Story” churned out five consecutive No. 1 best-sellers without leaving her comfort zone. How did she pull it off?
By Elisabeth Egan
For Pride Month, we asked people ranging in age from 34 to 93 to share an indelible memory. Together, they offer a personal history of queer life as we know it today.
By Nicole Acheampong, Max Berlinger, Jason Chen, Kate Guadagnino, Colleen Hamilton, Mark Harris, Juan A. Ramírez, Coco Romack, Michael Snyder and John Wogan
“It doesn’t make me esteem Wharton less. If anything, I take comfort in it, as a novelist.” Her own smash book “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is out in paperback.
In “The Singularity Is Nearer,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil reckons with a world dominated by artificial intelligence (good) and his own mortality (bad).
By Nathaniel Rich
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.
By Daisy Fried
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.
By Eric Deggans
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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.
By Adam Nossiter
In his beautiful memoir, “Do Something,” Guy Trebay paints a picture of a vanished, pre-AIDS Gotham that’s both gritty and dazzling.
By Andrew O’Hagan
Two decades after his death, a collection of over 800 works that the first president of Senegal owned is moving from France to Dakar.
By Aida Alami
In “A Gentleman and a Thief,” Dean Jobb vividly recounts the life and times of the notorious criminal — and tabloid fixture — Arthur Barry.
By Darrell Hartman
A massive, mysterious grizzly takes on symbolic weight in Julia Phillips’s moody and affecting second novel.
By Jess Walter
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.
By Scott Veale
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.
By David Segal
Summer is here! Try this short quiz about books that happen to be set in popular vacation destinations.
By J. D. Biersdorfer
“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.
By Alec MacGillis
In “Frostbite,” Nicola Twilley travels the cold chain that preserves what we eat and helps it get around the world.
By Sallie Tisdale
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Tracy O’Neill’s memoir, “Woman of Interest,” recounts her yearlong quest, which culminates in a trip to Korea.
By Sloane Crosley
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.
By Wilson Wong
Our columnist has summery new recommendations.
By Olivia Waite
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.
By Alexandra Alter
Starring an undergraduate student at Oxford, Rosalind Brown’s debut novel is exquisitely attuned to the thrill and boredom of academic life.
By Brian Dillon
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.
By Miguel Salazar
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.
By Jennifer Schuessler
This week's selection includes titles by Gabrielle Zevin, Peace Adzo Medie, Patrick Mackie and more.
By Shreya Chattopadhyay
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In her latest book, Olivia Laing makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.
By A.O. Scott
For young magazine readers with literary pretensions, it wasn’t just our best option; it was our only option.
By Sadie Stein
“Contemporary Art Underground” showcases hundreds of artworks commissioned by the M.T.A., by artists like Alex Katz, Kiki Smith and Vik Muniz.
By Erica Ackerberg
He turned “an insignificant trade house” into a powerhouse, publishing best sellers like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “All Creatures Great and Small.”
By Sam Roberts
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.
By Carl Zimmer
Across two new books, the ideal of a global free market buckles under pressure from protesters, politicians of all stripes and the Covid pandemic.
By Matthew Zeitlin
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.
By Elisabeth Egan
As a journalist and later as a Yale professor, she provided the intellectual tools to help actors, directors and audiences understand challenging theatrical work.
By Clay Risen
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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.”
By Richard Sandomir
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.
By Francesca Peacock
In Munir Hachemi’s novel “Living Things,” four young men seek adventure for “literary capital” and find exploitation.
By Rob Doyle
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.
By Amy Virshup
In “The Indispensable Right,” Jonathan Turley argues that the First Amendment has been deeply compromised from the start.
By Jeff Shesol
In “The Language Puzzle,” the archaeologist Steven Mithen asks exactly how our species started speaking.
By Dennis Duncan
In her new novel, “Sandwich,” Catherine Newman explores the aches and joys of midlife via one family’s summer week at the beach.
By Cathi Hanauer
In “A Place of Our Own,” June Thomas considers “six spaces that shaped queer women’s culture.”
By Anne Hull
“Same as It Ever Was,” by Claire Lombardo, is a 500-page, multigenerational examination of the ties that bind.
By Hamilton Cain
This quick quiz challenges you to identify a film’s source material based on a photo. Click here to play!
By J. D. Biersdorfer
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Our columnist on three twisty new tales of murder.
By Sarah Lyall
In her new book, Jessica Goudeau confronts a history of racism and violence in Texas through an investigation of her ancestors’ stories.
By W. Caleb McDaniel
Joseph Earl Thomas’s new novel, “God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer,” follows a health care worker on a tumultuous shift where every other patient seems to be someone from his past.
By Danez Smith
The gritty, bloody and relentlessly youthful musical features some of the most effectively vivid violence seen on a Broadway stage.
By Michael Paulson
A comprehensive new biography, by Michael Nott, lays bare the tragic circumstances behind a brilliant iconoclast’s life and work.
By David Orr
In Akwaeke Emezi’s latest novel, “Little Rot,” two exes trying to recover after a breakup inadvertently stumble into a dark, disturbing and dangerous side of Nigeria.
By Chelsea Leu
In her new book, “Traveling,” the music critic Ann Powers offers a highly personal, even confessional, meditation on Mitchell’s life, work and influence.
By Francine Prose
In “I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself,” Glynnis MacNicol ignores the pearl-clutchers and does just that.
By Joanna Rakoff
Notoriously reluctant to give advice, the author offered his views, and meticulous edits, to a lifelong friend: Roger Payne, the marine biologist who introduced the world to whale song.
By Walker Mimms
Justice, feminism, freedom and cheap horror thrills make for an exciting month of reading.
By Sam Thielman
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The second novel from the co-host of the “Who? Weekly” podcast follows a West Village writer in the early 1990s and today.
By Stephen McCauley
Three editors gather to discuss 10 books they’re looking forward to over the next several months.
Watch for new books by J. Courtney Sullivan, Kevin Barry and Casey McQuiston; re-immerse yourself in beloved worlds conjured by Walter Mosley, Elin Hilderbrand and Rebecca Roanhorse.
By Kate Dwyer
Memoirs from Anthony Fauci and Anna Marie Tendler, a reappraisal of Harriet Tubman, a history of reality TV from Emily Nussbaum — and plenty more.
By Wilson Wong
In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Recommended reading from the Book Review, including titles by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Elliot Page, Binyavanga Wainaina and more.
By Shreya Chattopadhyay
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