Skip to Content

Crimes and Misdemeanors

A look back at the eight best mystery books of 2020

About Time

The Pleasures of Phil Ochs

Just British

An Empress in Code

She was known for her three-hour hairstyling sessions, but Elizabeth of Austria also provided key, secret support to her husband, the Habsburg emperor

Murder, They Wrote

New York Minute

Ernst Haas’s bright, blurry photographs capture the vibrancy and transience of a city on the move

The Quiet Americans

Mountain High

Yuval Noah Harari

The author of Sapiens recommends three books for developing our sense of perspective

Back in the U.S.S.R.

A new book peels back the Iron Curtain with nostalgic photographs of life in the Soviet Union

French Literature’s Ringo Starr

Short List

What to read this week, from Roger Rosenblatt’s new essays to books on Venice and the origins of humankind

Upper East Side Spy

All’s Fair …

Doctors’ Orders

The story of two pioneering women doctors and the London hospital they founded amid the turmoil of World War I

On Thin Ice

Confessions of a hockey dad

Night and Day

The centenarian Eddie Jaku, who survived Kristallnacht and Auschwitz, considers himself “the happiest man on Earth”

A Little Knowledge …

Artful Dodger

The Female Gaze

Alongside a show at Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery, a book re-evaluates the history of photography through the lens of the New Woman

Strength in Numbers

Hollywood Ending

History forgot Arthur Calder-Marshall, the popular writer whose novel was picked up by Orson Welles. Now his grandson plays Welles in David Fincher’s Mank

AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2020

Music, film, history, and its bad boys: holiday reading for every type