NYT Books

Our critic on three terrific new mysteries and a gem-filled story collection.

A new history by Trevor Jackson argues that the economic system that transformed global living standards depends on endless growth impossible to sustain.

In “How Flowers Made Our World,” David George Haskell makes a case for their soft power.

“The other Peruvian” (alongside Mario Vargas Llosa), he exposed the heedlessness of the upper crust, which he knew well, and the suffering of the underclasses.

Nancy Lemann published her first novel at 28. Then came “the doom.” Now she’s back in the spotlight, and not exactly comfortable with it.

“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.

How The Washington Post’s now-defunct Book World transformed the careers of two giants of American literature.

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

In Mark Rosenblatt’s play, a powerful portrayal of the beloved children’s book author who almost gleefully exposes his bigotry.