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
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
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
Remembering Michael Silverblatt
Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, and others pay tribute to the longtime host of the Bookworm talk show, who died this week
The Artist and the Revolutionary
Hunted by his enemies and haunted by his past, living in exile in Mexico City, Leon Trotsky began an ill-begotten affair with Frida Kahlo
When Eisie Met Loren
“She was the most captivating and the nicest and the most hardworking actress I’ve ever met”: a new coffee-table book collects the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s timeless pictures of the Italian cinema icon Sophia Loren
The Making of Charlotte Brontë
How a controversial biography of the Jane Eyre author overcame accusations of slander from the novelist’s hellish former headmaster, her critics, and even her father to establish her enduring myth
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a new history of China’s path to Communism, a re-examination of the Bernie Goetz subway shooting, and McNally Editions’ reprint of a forgotten dark comedy
The Movie Brats
For the past 50 years, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg have been collaborators, competitors, critics, and, most incredibly, close friends
The Offensive Line
Inside the love-hate relationship between two of the most powerful men in the N.F.L.—Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones—and the media
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss the secret history of the fund that reshaped American democracy, a memoir by Andrew Cuomo’s divorce attorney, and a chronicle of the fight to save the Siberian tiger
The Last Great Media Mogul
At 94, Rupert Murdoch—who just launched a new tabloid, California Post—is the last vestige of the golden age of press barons, from Hearst to Pulitzer
The Empress Has No Clothes
Sir Edmund Backhouse, the author of a highly influential book on the Qing empress dowager Cixi, claimed affairs with everyone from Oscar Wilde to the empress herself—but was any of it true?
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a study of John Cheever’s short stories by his daughter, a fresh look at the siege of Leningrad, and an analysis of plagiarism for the age of A.I.
