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
When David Met Carmen
An alluring new book explores the relationship between two fashion luminaries
There’s Something About Serena
What is it about Serena Williams that brings the world’s best tennis players to their knees?
Drama Queen
Over a decade-long career at HBO, Miranda Cowley Heller worked on The Sopranos and The Wire. Her debut novel is as fun as the best TV shows
Short List
Books to read this week, including a memoir from Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris; an inside look at the Secret Service; the true story of a Montauk shipwreck; and a colorful history of spas
Love at First Letter
Inside the bizarre world of dating, sex, and marriage in America’s prisons
Bret Easton Ellis’s Rules of Attraction
The shock jock of American letters is back with a serialized audiobook that eschews the culture wars for something closer to home
Match Made in Hell, Part II
What would you do if the man you were sleeping with turned out to be a psychopath on the U.K.’s most-wanted list?
Building Castles in the Air
Photographs highlight the revolutionary work of today’s leading women architects
Digital Liberation
The Internet can be a dangerous place for women. But it has also powered a revolutionary global movement for women’s rights
O’Keeffe O’Clock
New York City street scenes meet oversize flowers and the American West in a sweeping survey of Georgia O’Keeffe’s epic work
The Wave of the Future Is Female
Tracing the male-dominated history of surfing to its women-wave-rider roots
The Mother of All Battles
What was behind Ethel Rosenberg’s fateful decision to stand by her traitor husband?
