A Most Wanted Man
Was M.I.6 agent Dick Ellis one of the worst traitors of the 20th century—or an unsung hero who first sounded the alarm on Pearl Harbor?
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss the story of a family fight over inheritance, a history of the White House Situation Room, and a biography of the great sportswriter Grant Wahl
The Renegade’s Tale
In an interview, Margaret Atwood discusses everything from Donald Trump to her newest story, “Cut & Thirst”
Honor Levy
With My First Book, the very online It Girl is defining Gen Z fiction
O.K., Groomer
A reporter’s dispatch from the trenches of the gender-and-sexuality wars in schools across the U.S. portends a perilous future for L.G.B.T.Q. teens
Murder, They Wrote
This month’s best mystery books range from a thriller spelling out the origins of Fascism in England to a literary whodunit reminiscent of The Thursday Murder Club
Station Havens
A new book offers a dazzling tour of 20th- and 21st-century railway architecture, from Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof to Chengdu’s Line 9
There Will Be Bloods
How the pioneering American dynasty both witnessed and shaped the creation of the United States
The Wife That History Forgot
A new discovery sheds fresh light on Alice Hathaway Lee, Theodore Roosevelt’s first love, who was largely written off as inconsequential in the president’s life
The Fall of the House of Astor (Revisited)
A posthumous memoir from the son of New York society’s departed queen offers a self-serving perspective on an infamous scandal
Fifty Shades of Romantasy
How a genre fusing romance and fantasy—replete with kinky elves—took over best-seller lists and women’s nightstands everywhere
The Secret Life of Jimmy Nelson
A new book collects the former advertising executive turned intrepid photographer’s shots of Indigenous peoples from Siberia to Nepal to Kenya
Who’s Afraid of the Internet Novel?
The latest wave of fictions attempting to capture life online is more damaged and dissociative than ever before
Director’s Cut
In the 1970s, Stanley Kubrick fought to block the publication of The Magic Eye, a book lightly critical of his films. Now, it’s finally getting published
Warning Signs
Publicly, Winthrop Bell was known as a standout Harvard professor. Secretly, the British spy was the first to raise the alarm about World War II
Photography’s Années Folles
George Hoyningen-Huene’s portraits of everyone from Josephine Baker to Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, and Frank Capra—collected in a new book—evoke the style and glamour of the 20th century
Editor’s Picks
This week, don’t miss Frank Bruni’s study of grievance, a humorist’s investigation into subtle distinctions, and a biography of Harry Truman