Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind. Read more
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Category: New Books
‘White Cat, Black Dog’ by Kelly Link
Link has a boundless imagination and a sharp sense of humor, but even in tales filled with vampires, monsters, and a menagerie of talking animals, she never forgets the humanity of her characters, even when she puts them through their paces. She’s no sentimentalist, to be sure, but she writes with a seemingly limitless compassion, which anchors the stories in something enduring, something more real than real. Read more
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How Poetry and Performance Combined to Become a New Genre
In “Spoken Word: A Cultural History,” Joshua Bennett traces the roots, rise and influence of a movement that continues to reverberate. Read more
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How America Manufactures Poverty
How is it that the United States, a country with a gross domestic product “larger than the combined economies of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, France, and Italy,” has a higher relative poverty rate than those other advanced democracies? Why do one in eight Americans, and one in six children, live in poverty—a rate about the same as it was in 1970? Why do we put up with it? Read more
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I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
This engrossing novel by the author of “The Great Believers” is many different books at once. It is a boarding school novel, offering an encapsulated view of a world within a world. It is a cold-case mystery in which readers learn new information along with the characters. It is an adult-revisiting-childhood story in which a narrator considers the past from a different viewpoint. It is also a perceptive commentary on contemporary society. These elements come together seamlessly in a fast-paced mystery. Read more
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‘Our Share of Night’ is a Masterpiece of Supernatural Horror
Mariana Enriquez’s novel, her first published in English, uses otherworldly elements to consider Argentina’s violent history. Read more
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Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America
This is an absolutely fascinating and deeply troubling book. Rage-inducing and heartbreaking, it’s a rigorously researched, energetically written examination of a phenomenon laughed off for too long as fringe silliness. QAnon, Sommer suggests, is no mere conspiracy theory, nor is it simply a cult of Donald Trump worshippers. It is, in a very real sense, a part of the Trumpist Republican mechanism, a dangerous force that influences political ideology and social change—a force that cannot and should not be ignored. Read more
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Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable
Rigorous research, in-depth analysis, and poignant case studies make this a must-read study of an urgent social issue. Read more
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Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book that Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos
Biographies of Muslim books remain few and far between, though (even the Princeton series so far includes only the all-too-obvious Qur’an). So, in recounting the life of an Islamic text as its fortunes waxed and waned over centuries, Wonders and Rarities is something of a rarity itself. Read more
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Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity
Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this is a standout guide to one of the world’s most pressing social issues. Read more
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