This Is Your Brain, On

ERIC BANKS on two new books about how we think

The Wild Bunch

CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN on Rachel Kushner’s novel of downtown artists and Italian revolt

The March of Folly

MICHAEL DIRDA on William Dalrymple’s richly detailed account of the first Afghan war

Peace in Our Time?

SUZY HANSEN on whether the United States can start over again in the Middle East

HEATHER HAVRILESKY on what academics have to teach us about assholery

CHOIRE SICHA on Charles Jackson and the curdled bohemian dreams of midcentury America

LINDA DELIBERO on Michael Pollan’s edifying tour of how your kitchen really works

LAURA KIPNIS on James Lasdun’s account of being stalked

PAUL MALISZEWSKI: The Letters of William Gaddis

JOHANNA FATEMAN: Luc Tuymans: Exhibitions at David Zwirner, 1994–2012

TREVOR PAGLEN: Laura Kurgan’s Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics

HEIDI JULAVITS: Christa Parravani’s her

SASHA FRERE-JONES on “Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine”

ALBERT MOBILIO: Man Ray: Portraits

JULIA BRYAN-WILSON: Arne Glimcher’s Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances

NOAH ISENBERG: Jeanine Basinger’s I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies

ZACH BARON: Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp

BEN SCHWARTZ: Glenn Frankel’s The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend

BRITT PETERSON: William Leach’s Butterfly People: An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World

DANIEL STEINMETZ-JENKINS: Yvonne Sherratt’s Hitler’s Philosophers

CHRIS BRAY: Robert M. Neer’s Napalm: An American Biography

JOSH FRUHLINGER: Victor S. Navasky’s The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power and Fiona Deans Halloran’s Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons

JAMELLE BOUIE: Robert G. Kaiser’s Act of Congress: How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

CHRISTOPHER BEAM: Peter Hessler’s Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West

GEORGE SCIALABBA: Albert Camus’s Algerian Chronicles

NICK GILLESPIE: Jonathan V. Last’s What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster

JESSICA WINTER: Matthew Specktor’s American Dream Machine

MARJORIE PERLOFF on Christa Wolf’s City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

DAPHNE MERKIN: Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs

ELIZABETH SCHAMBELAN: Albertine Sarrazin’s Astragal

JUSTIN TAYLOR: Fiona Maazel’s Woke Up Lonely

VIVIAN GORNICK: James Salter’s All That Is