Book Reviews

Wolitzer's new novel centers on a legendary feminist and the young woman whose life she transforms. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls The Female Persuasion an absorbing and compelling work.

Madeleine Miller's lush, gold-lit new novel is told from the perspective of Circe, the sorceress whose brief appearance in the Odyssey becomes just one moment in a longer, more complex life.

Michelle Dean's new compendium of outspoken women is as stimulating and insightful as its roster of guests — ten writers, from Dorothy Parker to Pauline Kael, who pulled no punches on the page.

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.

Author Leslie Jamison's new memoir of her years of alcoholism walks in the paths of drunken icons like Raymond Carver and John Cheever, describing the effects of intoxicants with gorgeous, exact care.

Brazilian modernist Clarice Lispector's second novel, written when she was 26, is an essentially story-free story, fragmentary and obsessed with the nature of thought — but it will carry you away.

Positive scientific results aside, the idea of shinrin-yoku shouldn't be surprising: Who hasn't felt an inner sense of well-being when walking along a forest trail? asks commentator Marcelo Gleiser.

In Catherynne M. Valente's new novel, a washed-up glitter punk musician has to save all humanity by singing in an intergalactic version of the Eurovision Song Contest. (Also, there are murderhippos.)

Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad's new book is a heartbreaking but necessary account of two teenage sisters from a moderate Muslim family who fled to war-torn Syria after becoming radicalized.

Stanley Kubrick's science-fiction epic — which opened to mixed reviews in 1968 — unknowingly foreshadowed the future of effects-driven blockbusters.