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'Great Black Hope' is a character study of a young, Black, queer man in high society
Smith – the protagonist in Great Black Hope – is at a party in the Hamptons when he's arrested for cocaine possession. Smith is a young, Black, queer man of privilege who's floated through New York's…
Published on 5 months, 3 weeks ago
'Fatherhood' traces a history of masculinity, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud
Historian Augustine Sedgewick became a father in the summer of 2017. At the time, media events like the Bill Cosby trial were publicly challenging ideals of masculinity and fatherhood. Motivated by c…
Published on 5 months, 4 weeks ago
New books by Carl Hiaasen and John Seabrook tell distinctly American stories
Carl Hiaasen and John Seabrook are out with new books that draw from their personal experiences in order to tell distinctly American stories. First, many of the scenarios in the novel Fever Beach wer…
Published on 6 months ago
Evan Osnos' 'The Haves and Have-Yachts' is a book of essays about the new Gilded Age
Following Donald Trump's election in 2016, New Yorker reporter Evan Osnos wanted to understand what the president's wealth and status represented in the minds of his supporters – and in American cult…
Published on 6 months ago
Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig reflect on 'The L Word' in memoir 'So Gay For You'
By the early 2000s, only a handful of queer female characters had ever been featured on television. Then, The L Word entered the scene in 2004, exploring lesbian identity, friendship and sex over six…
Published on 6 months ago
For a novel on the first women astronauts, Taylor Jenkins Reid studied old NASA PDFs
Joan Goodwin, an astronomer who has been in love with the stars since childhood, learns one day in 1980 that NASA is seeking the first women astronauts to join its space shuttle program. Taylor Jenki…
Published on 6 months ago
As prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern juggled leadership and motherhood
In 2017, Jacinda Ardern was sitting in a bathroom waiting to learn two things: whether she was going to be the prime minister of New Zealand – and whether she was pregnant. Ardern became only the sec…
Published on 6 months ago
In 'The Dry Season,' Melissa Febos chronicles a transformative year of celibacy
Writer and professor Melissa Febos had been in a series of consecutive relationships for decades. Then, one particularly devastating experience led her to take stock of her dependency on sex and love…
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago
Susan Choi's 'Flashlight' is about an alternate-universe version of her own family
A 10-year-old girl, Louisa, and her father take a walk on breakwater in Japan, where her family is living. Louisa is later found on a beach – her father has disappeared. She and her mother are left o…
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago
'Sea of Grass' chronicles the disappearance of the North American prairie
The North American prairie is home to bison, elk, wolves and bald eagles – and it's disappearing at a rapid rate. In their new book Sea of Grass, writers Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty chronicle th…
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago