NYT Books

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

2025 is more than halfway gone. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib discuss some of the books that have stayed with them most this year.

An adaptation of the Benjamin Britten opera, in turn based on Melville’s classic novella, joins a lineage of beautiful enigmas.

A new graphic biography of Caravaggio draws a provocative line from the old masters to the outsider artists of today.

It was once considered a virtue. Why do some people now think it’s a bad thing?

Adapted from the Esi Edugyan novel, this Hulu series follows a child who escapes slavery and embarks on a life of swashbuckling adventure.

Examining artifacts from the archive of British Romanticism, a scholar finds evidence of intimate, if often overlooked, connections to slavery.

Two darkly amusing graphic novels for kids pit machine learning and rocket science against good old-fashioned humanity.

“Empire of the Elite,” by Michael M. Grynbaum, is a story of (mostly) insider-outsiders who helmed the glossiest American magazines in their heyday.

A master of spoken-word performance, Gibson insisted that poetry, especially when read aloud to an audience, was a political act.