Her newly reissued masterpiece “The Transit of Venus” gestures at vast and intricate political problems.

Writing about the experience of illness is a burgeoning genre. What kind of hope can it offer?

On “Fake Accounts” and the problems of millennial fiction

A new collection of stories edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell explores the line between good taste and desire fulfilled.

A new book sorts through the controversies surrounding Alice Walker’s seminal novel.

After Charlottesville, the historian Joan Wallach Scott wanted to find out how societies face up to their past—and why some fail.

What if workers channeled their passion into organizing for better pay and conditions instead?

It has taken decades for his Century Cycle plays to reach the screen—but not for lack of interest.

A new book frames this country’s tendency toward state-sanctioned murder as a unique cultural inheritance.

A new history traces an anti-democratic politics of hate, repression, paranoia, and revenge to its origins.

Ayad Akhtar’s novel “Homeland Elegies” confronts a culture that expects Muslim Americans to explain themselves.

Why is one of Turkey’s foremost novelists in jail?

The pandemic has only accelerated a years-long trend of cultural homogenization—and it is bound to get worse.

Her new story collection poses thorny questions and defies her critics.

An elaborate secret life was a necessity for children’s author Louise Fitzhugh.

Three new books show how Northern states betrayed Black people, and why many found Mexico a safer destination.

The recent appearance of so-called monoliths in Utah and around the world taps into a deep-seated fascination.

What is lost when houses become fortresses against fires, floods, and disease?

A new book shows how the NRA forged an alliance between cops and civilian gun owners.

Chelsea G. Summers’s “A Certain Hunger” is a toothsome morsel.