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Paul Davis Sketchbook

Le Sirenuse’s Siren Call

Seventy years after John Steinbeck visited the spectacular Amalfi Coast hotel, Le Sirenuse maintains its literary roots in the form of a springtime writers’ retreat

Degrees of Separation

Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

The Red Flag of Modern Drama

Sean Connery Knew How to Beat Putin

On this week’s episode, Alessandra Stanley discusses how The Untouchables holds the key to deterring Vlad

Between Rome and Byzantium

A 40-year-old Milan Kundera essay holds the key to understanding the war in Ukraine

And the Oscar Goes
to …

In Good Night, Oscar, pianist and actor Oscar Levant’s startling appearance on Jack Paar’s Tonight show plays out onstage

No News Is Bad News

Can political documentaries effect change? Benjamin Netanyahu seems to think so

Murder, They Wrote

This month’s best mystery books are throwbacks to different periods in American history, from the 20s to the 90s

Now Boarding

Goodnight Vienna

An updated version of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, a comic opera about a Viennese love triangle, finishes its run at the Metropolitan Opera

Staff Picks

This week, don’t miss the case for slow societal change, a look at the murder of Nelson Mandela’s heir apparent, and the story of how the I.R.A. nearly assassinated Margaret Thatcher

Articles of War

How an author discovered W. E. B. Du Bois’s definitive history of Black participation in W.W. I, and why it remained unfinished—and largely forgotten

The Accidental Journalist

Over a long and unconventional career, Edward Jay Epstein learned to assume nothing—landing scoops on everything from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate along the way

Cowboy Mouth

Marcellus Hall’s Sketchbook

Drawing to Survive

The Felicity Factor

With an army of star authors under her wing, Felicity Blunt, a London literary agent and the wife of the actor Stanley Tucci, is having her moment

Mutiny on the Wager

The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann discusses his latest book, the 18th-century mutiny-and-shipwreck story The Wager

Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

New York Restaurants and the High Price of Eating Out

On this week’s podcast, Alan Richman reveals how N.Y.C. restaurants charge $100 for a $12 bottle of wine

Dinner with Rob Lowe

On this week’s episode of Table for Two, the West Wing actor and podcaster explains why he hated the “Brat Pack” label, reveals Francis Ford Coppola’s bizarre directing methods, and much more

Paper Trail