Books

Reading Zadie Smith's big-hearted, eloquent new essay collection is a lot like hanging out with a friend who's just as at home with pop stars as she is with philosophers.

Maggie O'Farrell's first book of nonfiction is a memoir — by turns thrilling and agonizing — of all of her brushes with death. And there have been many, from childhood illness to deadly riptides.

In The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú looks back on his time as a Border Patrol agent. He says, in his experience, "No matter what obstacle we put at the border, it's going to be subverted."

Critic John Powers says Mick Herron's latest novel sucks you in from the opening page, and a Netflix series imported from Germany is both fun and binge-able.

Maggie O'Farrell recounts the multiple times she cheated death in her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am. "We're different people afterwards," she says. "These experiences always take up residence inside us."

In Thomas Pierce's novel, a loan officer dies — but only temporarily, and uneventfully. "[He's] looking for some kind of bedrock in a world that does feel so full of mirage," Pierce says.

Jeanne Theoharis' new book re-examines civil rights history and the way it's been manipulated. "It is used to make us feel good about ourselves, to make us feel good about our progress," she says.

Christopher Potter's new history of space flight, The Earth Gazers, charts the road to the first photographs of Earth — and how it changes an astronaut to glimpse the entire planet at once.

Nina Sadowsky's day job is high-level Hollywood producer, and it shows in the cinematic drive of her new thriller. But the book's nonstop action leaves little time for details of place and character.

Rape has become a standard feature in crime novels — sometimes treated with nuance, sometimes with voyeurism. Sarah Vaughan's Anatomy of a Scandal approaches it with unexpected attention and care.