September 25, 2025 Fall Books Issue

Trevor Jackson

How to Blow Up a Planet

For liberal supporters of the “abundance” movement, deregulation is crucial to solving climate and economic crises. Their critics argue something more confrontational is needed.

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown

by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

The Significance of Trivial Things

Exhibitions and books commemorating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday call attention to the ways in which she transmuted the ephemera of her life into the precious treasures that figure in her novels.

A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, June 6–September 14, 2025

Miss Austen

a PBS Masterpiece series adapted by Andrea Gibb from the novel by Gill Hornby and directed by Aisling Walsh

A Jane Austen Year

by Sophie Reynolds

Jane Austen in 41 Objects

by Kathryn Sutherland

Mark O’Connell

The War App

Silicon Valley has reversed its longtime resistance to working in defense and security technology, with the CEO of the data analytics software company Palantir leading the charge.

The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska

Lorrie Moore

‘How Goes the Battle?’

Trauma is not a hackneyed literary trope in the work of Miriam Toews. Her first memoir emerges from the extreme and mysterious grief she endured after the deaths of her sister and father.

A Truce That Is Not Peace

by Miriam Toews

Martin Filler

What Joys Lie in Store

Can Printemps New York recapture the commercial sorcery of glamorous department stores like Wanamaker’s, Barney’s, and Bloomingdale’s?

Wanamaker’s Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store

by Nicole C. Kirk

They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World’s Greatest Store

by Gene Pressman

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion

by Julie Satow

Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion

by Nancy MacDonell

Linda Greenhouse

Abortion’s Long History

Abortion has been an inescapable fact of life for millennia. The question is, why do women gain or lose control over their reproductive lives at different times in history?

Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion

by Mary Fissell

After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion

by David S. Cohen and Carole Joffe

Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction

by Mary Ziegler

Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of Roe v. Wade

by Daniel K. Williams

Hala al-Shrouf,
Tayseer Abu Odeh,
Sherah Bloor

‘A Damn Nuisance’

Patrice Lumumba’s vision for a newly independent Congo fell victim to historical circumstances that were too powerful for him to overcome.

The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination

by Stuart A. Reid

My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria

by Andrée Blouin in collaboration with Jean MacKellar

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

a documentary film directed by Johan Grimonprez

Nathaniel Rich

Mars Is Heaven!

Percival Lowell was convinced that he had found proof of life on Mars, but his real achievement was to make Americans dream of a future there.

The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America

by David Baron

Théophile de Viau,
Richard Sieburth

Sam Tanenhaus’s biography of William F. Buckley helps explain how an elite intellectual could have seen less-educated voters’ distrust of intellectuals as offering the possibility of a new kind of American conservatism.

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

by Sam Tanenhaus

Osita Nwanevu

Conservatism’s Baton Twirler

The arrival of a Republican administration that wages war against immigrants and liberal colleges should be understood as the culmination of the conservative movement that William F. Buckley shaped and defined beginning in the 1950s.

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

by Sam Tanenhaus

Anahid Nersessian

Nobody’s Grand Tour

Michael Lentz’s novel Schattenfroh portrays a dystopia in which consciousness itself is just another commodity.

Schattenfroh: A Requiem

by Michael Lentz, translated from the German by Max Lawton and edited by Matthias Friedrich

E. Tammy Kim

When Trade Was at a Crossroads

In 1999 the World Trade Organization gathered in Seattle to celebrate free trade. The protest that followed offers a blueprint for effective resistance to globalization at a time of renewed urgency.

One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests

by D.W. Gibson

Sasha Abramsky

Ahead of the Game

Althea Gibson, one of the great tennis players of the twentieth century, made segregation in her sport untenable.

Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson

by Ashley Brown

Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson

by Sally H. Jacobs

Khaled Juma,
Tayseer Abu Odeh,
Sherah Bloor

Just a Loaf

a poem

Joshua Craze

South Sudan’s Democratic Mirage

The billions of dollars that the West has poured into the country have not made it richer or more peaceful, but they have enabled a dictatorship.

Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan

by Naomi Ruth Pendle

Insurgent Nations: Rebel Rule in Angola and South Sudan

by Paula Cristina Roque

Ruth Margalit

Forever Unmoored

Patrick Modiano’s grand theme is memory in unsettled times, with the characters in his novels caught between a mysterious past and a discordant present.

Ballerina

by Patrick Modiano, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Watch What You Say

Fara Dabhoiwala considers the right to free speech the con at the heart of the Constitution because of the harms it permits. But what about the harms it prevents?

What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea

by Fara Dabhoiwala

Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America

by Aryeh Neier