Locked and Loaded

CHRIS LEHMANN on the market-based mythologies of gun ownership

Cast in Doubt

GARY INDIANA on Renata Adler’s Speedboat and Pitch Dark

Hot and Bothered

CORAL DAVENPORT on the grim specter of climate change

Trigger Happy

JEFF SHARLET the misunderstood pleasures of armed America

BEN SCHWARTZ on the reactionary life and art of Al Capp

KERRY HOWLEY on Joel Osteen’s treatment of cosmic despair

MELANIE REHAK on brash chef Eddie Huang

CHOIRE SICHA on Jeff Bridges and the mantras of celebrity Buddhism

MATTHEW POWER: The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage

PRUDENCE PEIFFER: Paul Schimmel’s Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962

JENNIFER HOWARD: Ian Sansom’s Paper: An Elegy and Philip Hensher’s The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting

EUGENIA WILLIAMSON: Michelle Orange’s This Is Running for Your Life

RHONDA LIEBERMAN: Mary Blume’s The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World

RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH: Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

ALBERT MOBILIO: Joseph Cornell’s Manual of Marvels: How Joseph Cornell Reinvented a French Agricultural Manual to Create an American Masterpiece

JULIA BRYAN-WILSON: Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures

MINNA PROCTOR: David Shields’s How Literature Saved My Life

DENNIS LIM: J. G. Ballard’s Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton

EVGENY MOROZOV: Gavin Newsom and Lisa Dickey’s Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government

MAUD NEWTON: T. D. Allman’s Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: Angus Burgin’s The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression

LIZA FEATHERSTONE: Sarah Carr’s Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children

CHRIS WILSON: Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

JEFF STEIN: Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

CORD JEFFERSON: Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.’s Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

DAVID HAGLUND: Jonathan Dee’s A Thousand Pardons

SIDDHARTHA DEB: Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

ERIC BANKS: William H. Gass’s Middle C

PARUL SEHGAL: Anne Carson’s Red Doc>

JESS ROW: Jamaica Kincaid’s See Now Then

MEGHAN O’ROURKE: Amity Gaige’s Schroder