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A Brief History of Summer Reading

Cults, College Dropouts and the Art of Control in Two New Story Collections

Roberto Calasso, Renaissance Man of Letters, Dies at 80

Echoes of a Fairy Tale in a Devastating Novel

New in Paperback: ‘Antkind’ and ‘Looking for Miss America’

Poetry and Politics, HIPAA and Other Letters to the Editor

Repression, Obsession, Murder

The Pleasure of Falling Asleep With a Book on Your Face

Legends Remade: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

Emily Oster says you should run your family like a business. Does that work in 2021 — or ever?

A famous top cop brags of his successes — and shows his blind spots

Urging a new approach to autism: Stop looking for a cure and start listening

An all-Black musical was a Broadway smash — and then was mostly forgotten

Al Hirschfeld: Drawing entertainers with pen and ink, elegance and wit

The human history found inside a seashell

D.C. is a city of grand monuments and federal buildings. These photos capture the often unseen poetic details.

Alexandra Kleeman Finds Reality All Too Surreal

Eve L. Ewing Adds a Dash of Black Girl Magic to STEM-Based Learning

An Homage to Black Boyhood From the Creator of Tristan Strong

Floyd Cooper, Illustrator of Black Life for Children, Dies at 65

11 New Books We Recommend This Week

Shirley Jackson’s letters reveal the droll voice of an aggrieved working mother

Erik Larson Has a Scary Story He’d Like You to Hear

Everything Old Is New Again and Other Best-Selling Wisdom

Graphic Novelists Who Show Us What Loneliness Means

Phillip Lopate Is No Fan of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’

This Novel Revisits a Power Broker Who Trod Lightly and Left a Big Footprint

Side by Side With Sondheim: Alan Cumming Reviews a New Book About ‘Sunday in the Park’

Washington Post paperback bestsellers

New & Noteworthy, From Horse Girls to an E.R. Doctor’s View of Covid

11 New Books Coming in August

Niall Leonard is E.L. James’s husband, but his new novel shows he’s more than a plus-one

Witty and Soulful Stories From a Writer Who Was Just Getting Started

The 5 best new thrillers and mysteries to read in August

Finding the ‘Believers’ Who Will Remake a Damaged Earth

‘The Dark Part of My Life’: 5 Takeaways From Mena Suvari’s Book

A New John Oliver Killens Novel Arrives, Three Decades After His Death

Ha Jin Considers the Cost of Freedom in ‘A Song Everlasting’

Booker Prize Longlist Is Unveiled

In ‘Nightbitch,’ a listless mother turns feral

‘What Strange Paradise’ is a visceral account of a refugee’s desperation

The Extraordinary History (and Likely Busy Future) of Quarantine

The Enduring Whimsy and Wonderment of Eric Carle

A Son of Gabriel García Márquez Tenderly Recalls His Parents

New in Paperback: ‘Transcendent Kingdom’ and ‘Agent Sonya’

What Makes Elon Musk Different

A Heartbreaking Novel About Mothers, Daughters and Secrets

Make a Splash: 8 Summer Picture Books Take You to the Water

A new Trump book is disturbing but entertaining — and maybe that’s a problem

A homegrown garden of mind-altering substances