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CEREBRAL ENTANGLEMENTS: How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives, by Allan J. Hamilton The human brain! It’s amazing! A master conductor of our emotional symphonies, a supercomputer of intelligence, a treasure inside the “temple” of the skull, where it gloriously shimmers “vivid, vital, jewel-like.” I mean, is it any wonder we’re such a … Read more

Our recommended books this week take a philosophical turn — from novels that sneak meditations on memory and identity into their rousing stories of war (“The Ghosts of Rome”) or sex (“Soft Core”), to a look at the implications of global food production (“How the World Eats”) and a history of personal freedom (“The Age … Read more

This was clearly a useful way of being possessed. It was the lens through which Mr. Longley examined the Northern Irish situation. He “had an uncanny ability to allow myths that might have seemed less than pertinent to be tellingly on point, particularly in his many repurposings of Homer,” the poet Paul Muldoon wrote in … Read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | How to Listen Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties,” traces the events that led up to Bob Dylan’s memorable performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The book is about Dylan, but also about the folk … Read more

Maria Teresa Horta, a Portuguese feminist writer who helped shatter her conservative country’s strictures on women, died on Feb. 4 at her home in Lisbon. She was 87. Her death was announced on Facebook by her publisher, Dom Quixote. The Portuguese prime minister, Luis Montenegro, paid tribute to her on X, calling her “an important … Read more

It was on the flight home from my father’s funeral that I first met Paddington. In search of an easy watch to take our minds off things, my partner, David, and I thought a movie about the adventures of a C.G.I. bear in a floppy red hat might do the trick. We went in cold, … Read more

At one point, she gave the unfinished manuscript of “The Silent Woman” to Philip Roth. He gave it a slashing edit, with often nasty comments in the margins. He violently disapproved of her putting herself in as a character. He hated her metaphors and accused her of intellectual shallowness. Another writer might have been crushed … Read more

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Fosse said that “in my drama the word pause is without a doubt the most important and the most used word — long pause, short pause, or just pause.” The script for “Night Sings Its Songs” includes stage directions and, yes, many, many requests for pauses, but no punctuation. Concretely, … Read more

Many authors dream of having their notes, drafts and scraps preserved forever in a prestigious literary archive. But not Amy Tan. Until recently, she had left written instructions for everything except photographs to be shredded after her death, lest she be subjected to the posthumous ordeal of scholars “going through the equivalent of my underwear … Read more

Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years The book, the third in a series, has sold 2.7 million copies in its first week, and provided yet another example of the romantasy genre’s staying power. By Alexandra Alter Jan. 30, 2025