After Charlottesville, the historian Joan Wallach Scott wanted to find out how societies face up to their past—and why some fail.

What if workers channeled their passion into organizing for better pay and conditions instead?

It has taken decades for his Century Cycle plays to reach the screen—but not for lack of interest.

A new book frames this country’s tendency toward state-sanctioned murder as a unique cultural inheritance.

A new history traces an anti-democratic politics of hate, repression, paranoia, and revenge to its origins.

Ayad Akhtar’s novel “Homeland Elegies” confronts a culture that expects Muslim Americans to explain themselves.

Why is one of Turkey’s foremost novelists in jail?

The pandemic has only accelerated a years-long trend of cultural homogenization—and it is bound to get worse.

Her new story collection poses thorny questions and defies her critics.

An elaborate secret life was a necessity for children’s author Louise Fitzhugh.

Three new books show how Northern states betrayed Black people, and why many found Mexico a safer destination.

The recent appearance of so-called monoliths in Utah and around the world taps into a deep-seated fascination.

What is lost when houses become fortresses against fires, floods, and disease?

A new book shows how the NRA forged an alliance between cops and civilian gun owners.

Chelsea G. Summers’s “A Certain Hunger” is a toothsome morsel.

A Trump post-presidency memoir would be a mega-bestseller. But is the industry prepared to deal with the fallout?

Over 10 million people are stateless today. Why have governments failed to help them?

The similarities between Trump and strongmen from Mussolini to Bolsonaro are impossible to ignore.

Christopher Chitty’s “Sexual Hegemony” is a galaxy-brain examination of the ways in which markets and sexuality intersect.

Talia Lavin’s book “Culture Warlords” documents her efforts to root out white supremacy—through some creative methods.