Method to the Madness

LIDIJA HAAS ON COREY ROBIN’S NEW STUDY OF CLARENCE THOMAS

He Found It at the Movies

A. S. HAMRAH ON HOW FILM INFORMED RONALD REAGAN’S WORLDVIEW

Still Eating Animals

CHARLOTTE SHANE ON JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S STRUGGLES TO SAVE THE PLANET

TOM CARSON on how TV became president

BOOKFORUM CONTRIBUTORS on this season’s outstanding art books

LAUREN OYLER on Debbie Harry’s memoir

NATALIE WALKER on Broadway’s most iconic leading lady

GENE SEYMOUR: The Collected Novels of Charles Wright: The Messenger, The Wig, and Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About

JANE HU: Caleb Crain’s Overthrow

JENNIFER KRASINSKI: Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina

JOANNE O’LEARY: Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale

MARK GREIF: Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School

CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN: Zadie Smith’s Grand Union

CHLOE WYMA: Lubaina Himid: Work from Underneath

ALBERT MOBILIO: Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective

CHARLIE MARKBREITER: We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961–1991

SAM MCKINNISS: Peter McGough’s I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s

MEGHAN O’GIEBLYN: Leslie Jamison’s Make It Scream, Make It Burn

RACHEL SYME: Natasha Stagg’s Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011–2019

SARAH RESNICK: Anne Boyer’s The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care

SASHA FRERE-JONES: Jess Row’s White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination

MELISSA ANDERSON: Benjamin Moser’s Sontag: Her Life and Work

ROBERT CHRISTGAU: Nicholas Lemann’s Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

JORDAN LARSON: Jenny Brown’s Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women’s Work and Sophie Lewis’s Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family

MICHAEL ROBBINS: Richard Preston’s Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come and David Quammen’s Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

MALCOLM HARRIS: Daniel Markovits’s The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite

SUZY HANSEN: Suketu Mehta’s This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto

TOBI HASLETT: Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race