Blond Ambition

DAPHNE MERKIN ON THE MAGNETIC PRESENCE OF WRITER AND POLITICIAN CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

Dutch Renaissance

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL ON HOW AMERICA BECAME REAGAN COUNTRY

Innovators Abroad

JACOB SILVERMAN ON THE TECH WORLD’S CULT OF GENIUS

HEATHER HAVRILESKY on Wonder Woman’s lost feminist career

CHRISTOPHER LYON on recent art books

CHOIRE SICHA on the rich kids of Instagram

Melanie Rehak on Laurie Colwin’s kitchen dispatches

EMILY GOULD on perfume nerds

MINNA PROCTOR: James Ellroy’s Perfidia

BRENDA WINEAPPLE: John Williams’s Augustus

CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN: Ben Lerner’s 10:04

MICHELLE ORANGE: Marilynne Robinson’s Lila

LINDSAY ZOLADZ: John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van

JAMES CAMP: David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

EMILY RABOTEAU: Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings

SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT: Jo Ann Callis’s Other Rooms

MARK POLIZZOTTI: Marius Hentea’s TaTa DaDa: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara

CARL WILSON: Bob Stanley’s Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé

ERIC BANKS: Mary Beard’s Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up

ALBERT MOBILIO: The Essential Cy Twombly

LAUREN O’NEILL-BUTLER: Moyra Davey and Alison Strayer’s Burn the Diaries

LIZZIE FEIDELSON: Bill T. Jones’s Story/Time: The Life of an Idea

J. C. HALLMAN: Charles D’Ambrosio’s Loitering: New and Collected Essays

JENNA SAUERS: Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton’s Women in Clothes

KATHLEEN GEIER: James K. Galbraith’s The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Jake Halpern’s Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld

JEDEDIAH PURDY: Erwin Chemerinksy’s The Case Against the Supreme Court

JAMELLE BOUIE: Jeff Hobbs’s The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

HUSSEIN IBISH: Jean-Pierre Filiu’s Gaza: A History

SCOTT BEAUCHAMP: Michael MacDonald’s Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq

MEGHAN O’ROURKE: Eula Biss’s On Immunity: An Inoculation

EMILY WITT: Jonathan Eig’s The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution