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Positively 4th Street

When New York was still called New Amsterdam, a former slave ran a farm on the very terrain that would become the Greenwich Village stomping ground of folk singers and Beat poets

Death Stares on the Tigris

Inside Victorian England’s most intense feud—a backstabbing, betrayal-laden rivalry to decipher the writings of ancient Babylon and Assyria

Editor’s Picks

This week, don’t miss a timely look back at McCarthyism, a novel about a couple’s tragic battle with dementia, and a history of the four compass points

The Road to 10/7

Zen and the Art of Being Ruth Asawa

Coinciding with a major San Francisco exhibition, an updated biography of the sculptor chronicles her journey from Japanese-internment-camp prisoner to art-world pioneer

My Adventures in Journalism

In an interview, AIR MAIL Co-Editor Graydon Carter discusses Trump’s short fingers, the enduring magic of New York, and his memoir on the golden age of magazines

Deadly Pleasures to Read and Watch

This month’s best crime-fiction book and TV shows

Loos Woman

The novelist who beat F. Scott Fitzgerald at his own game

Titans at War

A new book tells the inside story of an epic feud between Winston Churchill and U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon

Editor’s Picks

This week, don’t miss a novel from a former New Yorker fact-checker, a history of NPR, and a portrait of one of the grandes dames of Impressionism

Play Ball!

Signs of the Times

From giant Nazi monsters to Mussolini–loving children, a new coffee-table book collects 20th- and 21st-century propaganda used by regimes around the world

The Yin to John Lennon’s Yang

Half a century after co-writing “Imagine” with her Beatle husband, Yoko Ono is finally getting the recognition she deserves

Editor’s Picks

This week, don’t miss an homage to Siena’s artistic golden age, a new collection of Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels, and a charming exploration of why we gossip

Fakir News!

Breaking Up with Facebook

Harper Lee, Lost and Found

Eight short stories by the To Kill a Mockingbird author, discovered after her death in 2016, are being published for the first time

Top of the Line

Algerian streets, Italian fountains, German tanks … The late New Yorker illustrator and cartoonist Saul Steinberg’s drawings are collected in a new edition of All in Line

Me and Tony Bourdain

At 35, I left my hard-won editor job to become Anthony Bourdain’s assistant. It was the best decision I’ve ever made

Hollywood Confidential

In order to evade racist Hollywood codes and immigration bans, Merle Oberon—the first Asian actress to receive an Oscar nomination—passed as white for almost 50 years

Editor’s Picks

This week, don’t miss a new history of the Irish famine, a survey of contemporary architecture, and a portrait of the Edwardian painter John Singer Sargent and his Jewish patrons

Journey to Italy

Five years ago, a Roman photographer set out on his version of Goethe’s Italian Journey. The results of the tour, which took him from Naples to Ponza to Positano, are collected in a new coffee-table book

What Happens in Europe Doesn’t Stay in Europe

Joan Didion, Movie Critic

Among the opinions unearthed in her Vogue film columns? She didn’t care for Billy Wilder, had little time for classics such as Casablanca, and was bored by Sidney Lumet