Facing the Music
A look back at the early days of the recording industry, before the advent of microphones and volume control
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a sprawling anthology of the true-crime genre, a look at Teddy Roosevelt’s longest friendship, and a compact history of music
The Cult Around the Corner
For nearly 30 years, a fringe psychologist exerted total control over the lives of his followers. His not-so-secret headquarters? A town house on Manhattan’s Upper West Side
The Secret History
Jackie O spent the years after her husband’s assassination trying to keep out of the public eye. Years later, her job as a book editor encouraged her to see the value in revealing private people’s secrets
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a memoir from a trial attorney for the rich and infamous, a novel about naughty aristocrats, and the history of Billionaires’ Row
Holding Court
A look at the glamorous and long-forgotten life of the 1930s tennis star Alice Marble
Walking Wounded
An excerpt from the upcoming book Wounds and Other Blessings offers a meditation on physical, emotional, and worldly slights
The Legend of Bogie and Bacall
Theirs went down in history as that rare thing: a fairy-tale Hollywood marriage. But a new book reveals a rocky start to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s life together
Being Bardot
A dazzling new coffee-table book collects Douglas Kirkland’s and Terry O’Neill’s photographs of Brigitte Bardot behind the scenes of some of her best films
Fact Is Fiction
In an interview, Colson Whitehead discusses his new novel, Crook Manifesto, cancel culture, and why he avoids reading contemporary fiction
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss a biography of the oft overlooked 20th U.S. president, James Garfield, a new edition of The Economist’s writing-style guide, and an eccentric coming-of-age novel
Murder, They Wrote
Martin Amis’s twin obsessions with Hollywood and serial killers are explored in four new mystery novels
Eyes on the City
Evelyn Hofer’s photographs of New York, Paris, and Dublin offer a look at 1950s-and-1960s-era city life and its evocative street scenes
Into the Wild
The adventurous side of the legendary photographer Peter Beard was part instinct, part carefully manicured image
In Search of Lost Whimsy
In a new coffee-table book, the eccentric Italian artist and designer Gaetano Pesce looks back on his life and career, and reflects on his longtime enemy: coherence