Short List
What to read this week, including a look back at home ec, a blow-by-blow of the Watergate scandal, and a history of Oceania
The Techno King of Tesla
Elon Musk may dislike being C.E.O. of the car company, but he wants to remain in power
Tears in Heaven
The George Harrison–Pattie Boyd–Eric Clapton love triangle is one for the ages. But were Boyd and Clapton doomed from the start?
Oedipus Complex
Inside the mind of Thomas Gilbert Jr., the Upper East Side golden boy who killed his own father
The Money Shot
Scottish photographer Albert Watson reveals the stories behind his best work
Short List
What to read in the coming weeks, from memoirs exploring masculinity and the cutthroat world of ballet to a look at the history and future of motion
It’s Complicated
The revolutionary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl won the hearts of everyone from Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger to Joseph Goebbels and Roger Ailes
WASP’s Nest
Terrified by the distinctly WASP-ish hell of lacking a life’s purpose, Cold War columnist Joe Alsop created a setting for his self-protective, civic-humanist fantasy
Safe Mode
The authors of a new book on the history of quarantines think they’re here to stay
Here Is New York
Douglas Corrance’s colorful photographs recall summers in 1970s and 1980s New York
Comstock’s Ghost
Anthony Comstock spent his life trying to curb women’s rights. His traumatic history makes his mission all the more bizarre—and perverse
Short List
What to read this week, including books on J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, and Roy Cohn; the virtues of forgetting; and the life of Rob Sedgwick
Good-bye, Blake Bailey
Book-industry insiders are coming down on both sides of the Blake Bailey–Philip Roth controversy, which resulted in the pulping of Bailey’s Roth bio
