Ahmed Rashid’s gloomy, essential account of the divisive US-Pakistan alliance.

The Whitney’s adventurous, awkward attempt to explore abstract art through the blues.

Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wandered and Other Stories; Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself

How music plagiarism ruined a composer’s career and literally drove him mad.

In Israel, an architectural competition and its winner have been sabotaged by the bad faith of its sponsors.

A history of how risk management profits from manufacturing new forms of uncertainty and insecurity.

How did everything a writer had known and loved come violently apart?

Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, Derek Cinfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, Brian Helgeland’s 42

FDR, Fiorello La Guardia and rebuilding New York City during the New Deal.