Inspired by a Double Bagel
How the most one-sided defeat of Carlos Alcaraz’s life paved the way for his ascent to the top of the tennis world—and his moneymaking drop shot
R. F. Kuang
At 29 years old, the Chinese-American author of the best-selling novel Yellowface is getting ready to publish her sixth book—and complete her fourth degree
Picture This
A new coffee-table book collects Martyn Goddard’s photographs of Blondie, capturing the pop-punk band at their peak in the hot New York summer of 1978
Deadly Pleasures to Read and Watch
A tartan noir for our times, and an excellent new British heist drama
The Designer Who Set Women Free
In contrast to Dior’s waist-cinching “New Look,” Claire McCardell’s “American Look” brought comfort to women’s fashion
Face Time
From Whitney Houston to Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Louise Bourgeois to Kate Moss, a new coffee-table book collects a lifetime of portraits by the photographer Bruce Weber
Grandmother Courage
The little-known story of the Argentinean women who fought to reclaim their stolen grandchildren—and helped topple a dictatorship
She Come Groovin’ Up Slowly
How Rosemary Woodruff Leary, the wife of the infamous psychedelic advocate Timothy Leary, sparked one of the Beatles’ greatest hits
Back from the Dead
Jim Marshall’s Grateful Dead photos, capturing the calm and chaos of the 1960s rock ’n’ roll scene, are collected in a new coffee-table book
Hex and the City
Jonathan Mahler reveals how the late 1980s in the city foreshadowed this year’s mayoral race—and the Trump presidency
Manifest Industry
Eighty years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a new book looks back at the American factories that manufactured its crucial minerals on an unprecedented scale
The Spy Who Came In from the Burning Picassos
Working undercover for the French Resistance, Rose Valland witnessed the Nazis’ destruction of 500 precious artworks
Tenn out of Tenn
Svenskt Tenn, the Stockholm-based design company shaped by Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank, celebrates its centennial with an archival coffee-table book
Like & Other Drugs
Long before ChatGPT and self-driving cars, the humble Thumbs-up button took the technology community by storm—and rewired our brains forever
The Write Stuff
An inter-office memo highlighting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s inherent racism reveals Toni Morrison to have been as fierce an editor as she was a writer
The Gwyneth Chronicles
A new, unauthorized biography of the actress and Goop founder dishes a lot of dirt and shows how Gwyneth Paltrow has left an indelible mark on popular culture
