Books & Culture

Aleshea Harris takes the religious undercurrents of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and dirties them, wisely, in her new revenge thriller.

The front man of Death Cab for Cutie discusses resisting nostalgia, working through loss, and why he can’t get away with singing like Matt Berninger or Thom Yorke.

“The Last Temptation of Christ,” the director’s 1988 epic, became one of the first victims of a new conservative playbook—and set the template for the culture wars of today.

After winning the tournament in 2006, gli Azzurri have become a national embarrassment, and their failure has sparked a conversation in Italy over who gets to be a citizen.

For the critic Leslie Fiedler, the country’s best and worst fiction was shaped by visions of escape from society—and therefore from maturity.

Once outlawed as obscene, D. H. Lawrence’s novel was meant to heal the world’s sickness about sex. Instead, it mattered most as a legal milestone, a pop-culture shorthand, and a meme.

Why read historical fiction? A new novel by the author of “Hamnet” offers one answer: because it’s fun.

“Look What You Made Me Do,” “Magadh,” “Adrift in the South,” and “The Story of Birds.”

Two surprise hits, both directed by precocious YouTube-trained talents, breathe shivery cinematic life into urban legends and cautionary tales.

In John Carney’s dramedy, a thwarted songwriter, played by Paul Rudd, crosses paths with a former boy-band star in search of new material.

It wasn’t a banner year for the world’s most important film festival, but there were gems among the twenty-two films contending for the Palme d’Or.

Matters of adolescent identity and child welfare loom compellingly large in new festival-premièred films from Marine Atlan, Jordan Firstman, and Cristian Mungiu.

Theatricality goes only so far at the ambitious new restaurant from the group behind London’s Gymkhana.

With a soaring new complex in midtown, the restaurateur Simon Kim continues to turn his Korean-barbecue-meets-steak-house concept into a high-status luxury chain.

Americans are losing their appetite for booze. Could the mini Martini lure them back?

A new downtown restaurant from the team behind King serves proudly jolie-laide English classics, beautifully.

Over five stellar seasons, Jean Smart’s and Hannah Einbinder’s characters became unlikely artistic soul mates, whose brilliance grew out of their creative friction.

“Euphoria” and “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” are wildly different but equally unrealistic.

The AMC dramedy’s skewering of tech bros might feel familiar in 2026—but a focus on oft-overlooked elements of the world they’ve created gives the series a strange verve.

Richard Gadd’s follow-up to “Baby Reindeer” traces a decades-long quasi-familial relationship that’s thornier than any other male bond on TV.

A new Off Broadway play and Shakespeare’s tragedy hinge on a universal anxiety: How well do you know your partner?

Samuel Barber’s 1958 opera was in disrepute for decades. A remarkable new production is the latest evidence of its rightful resurgence.

Camp has become the go-to aesthetic for Broadway musicals. These two new shows dare to be sincere.

Gina Gionfriddo’s zinger-filled sex farce and the celebratory ballroom-culture adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s confounding musical are cathartic catnip.

The composer’s work, featured at a recent festival in Germany, includes a howling denunciation of war crimes against children.

The polymath musician, formerly of Vampire Weekend, likes to push our idea of what a pop song can be.

One of the originators of the genre now haunts it.

Newly released archival live performances by Ahmad Jamal, Joe Henderson, and Cecil Taylor illuminate their legacies and the art form at large.