Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”? Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”?
Alex Higley’s True Failure, which dramatizes one man’s dream to pitch his business idea on reality TV, slyly compares this bathetic task to publishing literary fiction.
Jul 29, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Ben Sandman
Before Sebald Was Great Before Sebald Was Great
By looking at his early work, we can better understand who the German writer was beyond his persona as the melancholy intellectual and serious man of letters.
Jul 28, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace
The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta The Argentine Grandmothers Who Resisted the Junta
Haley Cohen Gilliland’s A Flower Traveled in My Blood looks at the efforts of a human rights group to find the children and grandchildren who were disappeared by a dictatorship.
Jul 24, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jacob Sugarman
Want to Understand Global Inequality? Visit the Dump. Want to Understand Global Inequality? Visit the Dump.
Alexander Clapp’s Waste Wars, a world-spanning inquiry into the politics of garbage, makes a case that everything that is wrong with capitalism is embodied in our trash.
Jul 23, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Carol Schaeffer
The Enduring Lessons of Wages for Housework The Enduring Lessons of Wages for Housework
Emily Callaci’s history of the international feminist movement examines the influence of their intellectual and political victories.
Jul 22, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Maia Silber
The Impish Modernism of Michael Clune The Impish Modernism of Michael Clune
In Pan, his debut novel, he makes the unruly mind of a teenager the stuff of high art.
Jul 21, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Adam Wilson
The Life and Times of Talking Heads The Life and Times of Talking Heads
How influential was the New Wave band?
Jul 17, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Hajdu
The Fragmented Lives of Nate Lippens The Fragmented Lives of Nate Lippens
His bracing novels represent an honest reckoning with the post-AIDS era and its effect on life and imagination.
Jul 15, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Gutterman Tranen
The Damage Being Done to the Museums in the Nation’s Capital The Damage Being Done to the Museums in the Nation’s Capital
Our art critic visits the Smithsonian American Art Museum to get a closer look at the Trump administration’s attack on DC arts institutions.
Jul 14, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
The Miracles of James Schuyler The Miracles of James Schuyler
Nathan Kernan’s biography of the New York School poet tracks the development of his serene and joyful work alongside the chaos of his life.
Jul 7, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Evan Kindley