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
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A new coffee-table book collects more than 100 rare and previously unpublished photographs by Lee Friedlander, America’s pre-eminent chronicler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
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 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
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
The Cost of Custer’s Last Stand
A new book reveals the breathtaking toll of the bloody 1876 battle between the U.S. military and the Sioux-Cheyenne coalition, which devastated families on both sides
Gaslit, Gatekept Girlbosses
The biographer of cosmetics titan Mary Kay reveals how the other female inventors and entrepreneurs of her time were foiled and forgotten
The Sport of All Sports
“A game of the people, by the people”: as the World Cup comes to a close, a coffee-table book—and a devoted fan—pays tribute to the elegance and grandeur of soccer
The Poet’s Premiums
Wallace Stevens was a successful insurance executive by day and a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet by night—but his letters reveal he had existential doubts about the trade-off
The Pleasure Gardens of London
Forget the candlelit ballrooms of Jane Austen novels—partying in 18th-century London meant water taxis, drunken aristocrats, and enough pyrotechnics to level Pompeii
Some Like It Sleek
Clean lines, open plans, boxy silhouettes … a new coffee-table book traces how the eastern tip of Long Island became the proving ground for American modernism
Grand Lutetia Hotel
How a Paris hotel that once hosted Hemingway and Picasso became a home for anti-Nazi exiles, German intelligence officers, and, finally, concentration-camp survivors
An Unhealthy Dose of Skepticism
How a handful of housewives dedicated to debunking the official account of the J.F.K. assassination unwittingly ushered in the age of the conspiracy theorist—from 9/11 truthers to One Direction’s “Larry” stans
The Revolutionary Spirits
America’s Founding Fathers were fueled by a belief in liberty, democracy, and self-determination—and, as a new book points out, extraordinary amounts of rum
Murder, They Wrote
Three psychological thrillers show how a life in the arts can get more brutal than a U.F.C. match—especially when a love triangle is involved
