The Magic Touch
Harry Houdini built an elaborate web of deception in his quest for immortality. Nearly a century after his death, his biographer notes, the myths have corroded but his legend lives on
Chronicling Harlem
A new book collects the rare work of Leo Goldstein, the little-known photographer who cast his lens on life in postwar East Harlem
André Bishop
On the first books he loved
The Last Queen of France
Marie Antoinette’s biographer on her secret plot to stop the Revolution, and what history got wrong about the monarch
A Room of Their Own
A 1920s note from Vita to Virginia is an exercise in reassuring a lover
Deborah Berke
On the books that unite literature and architecture
They Publish the Perished
Thanks to New York Review Books Classics, masterpieces such as Stoner, Speedboat, and Poison Penmanship are back in print and finding new fans
Postcard from the Alps
With fall comes winter planning: a new cookbook features photographs of Europe’s snowy peaks, and food to match
Anthony Horowitz
On the most intriguing—and enduring—fiction
Genius Loves Company
The author of the first account of Einstein’s British entanglement unveils the physicist’s unlikely
English-countryside hosts
Medieval Plastic
Robert Harris’s new novel is set after modern civilization collapses and the world reverts to the Dark Ages
