Tash Aw’s epic Malaysian tale gets off to a promising start in ‘The South’
It’s 1997, the Asian financial crisis is tanking stock markets and “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans is playing in the market of a southern Malaysian...
Books
Only Brandon Sanderson could invent a sword that needs therapy
Grappling with mental health issues is a major theme in Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive. As the series’ heroes fight hostile armies and the machinations of a...
Newspaper’s Summer Reading List Was Filled With Fake, AI-Generated Books
What’s that? You haven’t read The Collector’s Piece by Taylor Jenkins Reid?! How could you have skipped Migrations by Maggie O’Farrell?! It’s one of the most important books of the decade!...
The week’s bestselling books, May 25
Hardcover fiction 1. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Press: $30) An unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond. 2. James by Percival Everett (Doubleday: $28) An action-packed reimagining...
The Shadowy Industry That Shaped American Work
A few years ago, a cheeky meme made the rounds on the internet—a snappy rejoinder to a question about dream jobs: “I do not dream of labor.” The witticism, sometimes...
How Big Pharma Paved the Way for MAHA
In February, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as the senior-most health-care official in the United States, many Americans were appalled. Kennedy has a long and lucrative history of...
You need more than Ozempic to fight food addiction. Here’s how
Are cookies and chips the new cigarettes? And soda, breakfast cereals and ice cream the new opioids? In his new book, “Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving...
The tech billionaires are missing the point of their favorite sci-fi series
One of the most momentous developments of the new Trump era is how major billionaires in the tech industry — frequently known as the broligarchs — have thrown their weight...
Jake Tapper says the media didn’t cover up Biden’s ‘Original Sin’: ‘We were just lied to’
Eleven minutes into the June 27 presidential debate, CNN anchor Dana Bash slipped a note to her colleague Jake Tapper after President Biden gave a rambling, incoherent answer. “He just...
Shutting Down Salman Rushdie Is Not Going to Help
Free speech is forever a matter of perspective. Unless you are an absolutist—and very few true absolutists exist—everyone draws their red lines somewhere, whether it’s at racist epithets or yelling...
