NYT Books

“American Men,” by Jordan Ritter Conn, and “Who Needs Friends,” by Andrew McCarthy, report from the front lines of the epidemic of male loneliness.

In a new book, the Harvard scholar Marjorie Garber suggests how Americans targeted during the Red Scare used literature to confound their interrogators.

“Open Space,” by David Ariosto, suggests there are few limits on human ingenuity that could prevent us from colonizing the cosmos.

Fascinated by the fringes, he wrote a definitive history of libertarianism and books about underground comics and the Burning Man festival.

In Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s novel “Almost Life,” a passionate love affair between two college women gives way to a lifetime of what-ifs.

A new book by Rhae Lynn Barnes examines how minstrelsy once occupied the center of the nation’s cultural life.

In “Playmakers,” Michael Kimmel traces, and celebrates, the immigrant roots of the American toy industry. (Batteries not included.)

As his new memoir demonstrates, he himself would achieve fame as a visual artist, filmmaker, TV host and formative tastemaker.

In “The Feather Wars,” James H. McCommons pays tribute to the nation’s first conservationists.

Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.