NYT Books

Three new books explore the complications of liberty and the seductions of authoritarianism in American life.

Judith Butler’s new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?,” tries to turn down the heat on an inflamed argument.

In “The Return of Great Powers” and “Up in Arms,” Jim Sciutto and Adam E. Casey consider modern-day superpower conflict through the lens of the past.

A Philadelphia chef goes searching for her family history in Jo Piazza’s sun-baked multigenerational tale “The Sicilian Inheritance.”

An editor’s ambition. A coveted manuscript. The gift of a cow. Lives and lies graze one another in Neel Mukherjee’s tragicomic novel.

In Julia Alvarez’s “The Cemetery of Untold Stories,” a boneyard in the Dominican Republic becomes a rich wellspring for discarded narratives.

Cynthia Carr’s compassionate biography chronicles the brief, poignant life of the transgender actress Candy Darling, whose “very existence was radical.”

Annabelle Tometich’s “The Mango Tree” provides an unvarnished look at her mother, who shot a BB gun at the truck of a purported fruit thief.

“Table for Two” is a collection of six stories and a novella set in two very different cultural capitals.

In Carys Davies’s latest novel, a financially struggling pastor is dispatched to a remote island to evict its lone resident.