Genevieve Valentine
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Stefan Zweig's famous book is as much about its own context as an execution 300 years ago; its archness signals a time capsule, except that the rhetoric around women in power has changed so little.
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Mindy Aloff has attempted the nearly impossible task of collecting, in an anthology, the essays, excerpts, and asides that create a snapshot of the history of American dance.
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Kenji Miyazawa is a beloved author in Japan; this book — a reissue of a 1993 story collection — balances chaos and kindness, natural and supernatural to build a world in which anything might happen.
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Journalist Vince Beiser's no-nonsense writing makes light reading of a grim subject, the past and future of sand, but it paints a telling picture of how great a problem lies before us.
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Sometimes, you want to leave the world behind and escape into a book — but if you're in the mood for a good disaster story, we've got a selection of summer reads that are just the right kind of grim.
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Jordy Rosenberg's novel follows a professor who acquires the autobiographical "confessions" of legendary thief Jack Sheppard, and tries to add some academic footnotes — but things don't go to plan.
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Mary Shelley's timeless novel gave us not only an enduring trope — the misunderstood monster — but an equally enduring way to talk about what happens when human knowledge outpaces responsibility.
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The companion piece to this year's Met Gala, Heavenly Bodies functions beautifully as an art object — but it has some odd blank spots, particularly around the contributions of women to Catholicism.
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This collection of essays by novelist and scholar Joanna Russ was first published in 1983 — but it reads as if it might've come out last week. "Get angry; then get a reading list," says our critic.
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Evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen's new book is a breezy (sometimes too breezy) account of the ways animals have adapted to city life, and the staggering impact humans have had on evolution.