Helmut Newton’s Hot Takes
A coffee-table book and exhibition re-create a 1999 album of the photographer’s most experimental work, collecting never-before-seen images and their handwritten pencil annotations
When Larry McMurtry Met the Merry Pranksters
The biographer of the pre-eminent Texas chronicler recounts an infamous encounter with Ken Kesey’s gang of LSD enthusiasts, later immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a roadmap to saving America’s public high schools, a cartographer’s analysis of the Dark Ages, and a guide to coping with our most difficult emotions
“Serious Photographs Disguised as Entertainment”
With the arrival of warmer weather, two new coffee-table books revisit the late Martin Parr’s wry pictures—and the environmental warning simmering beneath them
Murder, They Wrote
This month in mysteries: a return of Tana French’s retired cop, Cal Hooper, and a debut thriller about a female detective investigating a strange cold case
The Last Gentleman
My father, George Plimpton, was chivalrous, charming, and always a little out of reach
The Making of Ai Weiwei
A new coffee-table book traces the artist’s humble beginnings in China, the exiles and travel bans he endured, and the radical works he created along the way
Dishing with Ruthie Rogers
In an exclusive excerpt from the River Cafe impresario’s forthcoming book, Wes Anderson, Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, and others talk all things food, from microwave dinners to caviar
The Reich Stuff
How former Nazi collaborators became France’s top culinary taste-makers
When Uptown Met Downtown
Fred Brathwaite—better known as Fab 5 Freddy—bridged the worlds of punk and hip-hop, graffiti and high art
The Monty Python Diaries
In an interview, Eric Idle looks back on the heyday of the British comedy group, from working with Lorne Michaels to partying with Ringo Starr and Keith Moon
Gordon Parks’s Church Diaries
In honor of Black History Month, a new coffee-table book collects never-before-seen images taken by the American photojournalist and civil-rights advocate during a 1953 assignment in Chicago for Life magazine
Romantic Advice to Ruin Your Life By
A breakdown of all of the unsolicited advice that will hit an unengaged woman in her early 30s—and why you shouldn’t listen to any of it
Gavin Newsom and the Frisco Aristos
While the California governor attempts to paint himself as a scrappy Everyman in his new memoir, behind the scenes, a powerful network of blueblood San Francisco dynasties has quietly buoyed his career for decades
Gossip Girl: An Oral History
In a new book, Blake Lively, Chace Crawford, Sebastian Stan, and other members of the cast and crew recall the fan-frenzy surrounding the aughts-defining show
Nightmare at the Museum
A mammals expert for the American Museum of Natural History reveals how a former president of the New York institution used its resources to advance his eugenics agenda
Remembering Michael Silverblatt
Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, and others pay tribute to the longtime host of the Bookworm talk show, who died this week
