Book Review: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

BY RONAN FARROW LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 2019 414 PP.; $30.00 "It's a big club, and you ain't in it." So goes the punchline to an old George Carlin bit on our ruling elite that... Read More
The Testaments

BY MARGARET ATWOOD NAN A. TALESE, 2019 432 PP.; $28.95 [Mild spoiler alert: this review contains plot details of the book.] During the torture session conducted by the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien in George Orwell’s... Read More
Machines Like Me

BY IAN MCEWAN NAN A. TALESE/DOUBLEDAY, 2019 333 PP., $26.95 Early on in this novel, the momentous question it raises—what is a human being?—becomes maddeningly opaque, and the anguished vibes that pervade Machines Like Me... Read More
The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent

P.E. MOSKOWITZ BOLD TYPE BOOKS, 2019 272 PP.; $28.00 Words like “controversial” and “provocative” are overused. When you read or hear that so-and-so’s stand-up comedy is “controversial,” that’s usually the culture-war commentariat wishing that reaction... Read More
The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

BY ANDREW SEIDEL STERLING, 2019 352 PP.; $24.95 The first thing I’ll say about Andrew Seidel’s The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American is that it’s sad it had to be written. To many... Read More
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

BY COREY ROBIN HENRY HOLT & CO., 2019 320 PP.; $30.00 Clarence Thomas is the most right-wing justice on the Supreme Court, and one of the most right-wing justices in the last hundred or so... Read More
What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life

BY PHIL ZUCKERMAN COUNTERPOINT PRESS, 2019 400 PP.; $28.00 In his new book, What it Means to Be Moral: Why Religion is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman, who is a professor... Read More