Much like the Spanish Inquisition, no one expected the Great Recession. Why didn’t America’s highly paid economists have a clue? Will they ever get their act together?

The Vietnam War gets Ken Burns’s signature “docutainment” treatment, and the result is a worthy one, if not always up to full scholarly standards.

Jeremi Suri’s The Impossible Presidency grounds contemporary debates about the presidency in a historical understanding of the office—and shows why its recent occupants don’t measure up.

Matthew B. Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head is a thoughtful philosophical discourse on modernity and its discontents—with plenty of resonance for our current political moment.

Or how to “throw” your screen.

How much does the contents of one’s plate reflect the content of one’s character? One new book argues: quite a lot.

Verdi’s opera Macbeth showcases in thrilling music the crux of Shakespeare’s play: that humans have free will, and suffer the consequences.

Perry Anderson’s critique of liberal hegemony was written before Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in November of last year. And in a way, Trump’s election might serve as a vindication of Anderson’s attack.

“Racism” is the easy answer to the question of how America’s prisons got so full of African Americans. A new book offers a more complex and hopeful view.

A new book urging the West to reconcile with Russia gives too much credit to Russia and too little to the West.