Seriously, What Do People Do All Day?
A children’s classic gets a 2026 makeover
Harry Gruyaert in Color
A new coffee-table book collects the Belgian photographer’s saturated, unabashed pictures of New York, taken over 52 years of trips to the city
Ray’s Anatomy
An exhibition in Kassel, Germany, examines the frank, sometimes transgressive sculptures of the contemporary American artist Charles Ray
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss the story of how debris from 9/11 was repurposed, a jaunty history of punctuation, and a look into the making of Paul Simon’s Graceland album
Announcing the Winners of the 2025 AIR MAIL Tom Wolfe Prizes
The recipients of the inaugural awards are Vincenzo Latronico, for fiction, and Meghan Daum, for reportage
America’s Sweetheart
From Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi to Andy Warhol, Titanic to Ghostbusters II, an exhibition in Fort Worth, Texas, explores the history and legacy of the Statue of Liberty
Dominic Sessa
Plucked from Deerfield Academy five years ago for his breakout role in The Holdovers, the 23-year-old is back on-screen as Anthony Bourdain in Tony, starring opposite Antonio Banderas and Leo Woodall
Murder, They Wrote
This summer’s best mystery books feature heroines of Homeric proportions, from a female police chief who resuscitates a tragic cold case to a union leader turned drug queenpin
Portrait of a Country
A new coffee-table book collects more than 100 rare and previously unpublished photographs by Lee Friedlander, America’s pre-eminent chronicler
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; a harrowing new account of Hiroshima; and an illustrated field guide to endangered bird species
The Director and the Madman
Born one year apart, Roman Polanski and Charles Manson lived eerily parallel lives for years before finally intersecting at the brutal murder of Sharon Tate
A Tale of Two Names
The editor of Kitchen Confidential attempts to reconcile Tony Bourdain, the socially awkward man she counted as a close friend, and Anthony Bourdain, the cool-cat global traveler the world came to love
The Black Sheep of British Art
An exhibition in London spotlights Richard Dadd, the Victorian artist who created most of his works while hospitalized after killing his father
The Man Who Made the Beatles
Under Brian Epstein’s guidance, the Beatles traded dodgy Liverpool clubs for the world’s greatest stages. But the manager’s private life was a far more tragic tale
Rocky Road
The Pan-American Highway was going to connect Alaska to Argentina, but it couldn’t surmount the Darién Gap. Now it’s migrants, not motorists, making the crossing
The Art of War
A new book collects Lee Miller’s photographs of the Blitz, a time when the American, with no permit to work yet still holding a tourist visa, turned her camera to a Britain under fire
A Complicated Man
Why does The Odyssey still resonate? Because, at its core, it is the story of a warrior’s struggle to re-enter civilian life
