In her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Wilkerson says that acknowledging America's caste system deepens our understanding of what Black people are up against in the U.S.
Raven Leilani's novel centers on a young woman with a free-range libido who dreams of being a painter. Luster is a crackling debut about sex, art and the inescapable workings of race.
More than 2,000 newspapers have shut down in recent years, and some regions have become news deserts. Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan says the collapse of local news undermines democracy.
This mordantly funny horror film opens on a young woman who awakens with a terrifying premonition of doom. She Dies Tomorrow feels surprisingly in tune with our present moment of unease.
Ross, who died July 21, was a member of the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. She wrote "Twisted," which was recorded by both Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler. Originally broadcast in 1990.
A new comedy from The Muppets Studio features familiar characters and a few new ones. But the Disney+ series isn't nearly as funny as the original — and many of its sketches go on too long.
Swift's eighth studio album came as a surprise. In the isolation of the past months, she's cooked up a yeasty kind of sugar-free pop that rises above much recent music-making.
The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host, who died July 24, held the Guinness World Record for clocking more hours on camera than anyone else in the history of TV. Originally broadcast in 2011.
In his new book, White Too Long, Jones examines the legacy of white supremacy among Southern Baptists and other Christian denominations. Jones says the Southern Baptist Convention tends to focus on each individual's interior relationship with God — and "essentially screens out questions of social justice."
Blakey led his band for almost 40 years, making many classic records with top musicians. Just Coolin', a newly unearthed 1959 recorded studio session, showcases his stylistic precision.
About half of the Miami Marlins' roster has tested positive for COVID. ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian explains the challenges Major League Baseball faces as play resumes amid the pandemic.
Natasha Trethewey has written before about the murder of her mother decades ago by her step father. She got a new window on her mother's life after getting access to the police files about her mother's case. Her new memoir is 'Memorial Drive.'
Mike Birbiglia explores his ambivalence about parenthood in the new book, The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad. Stein collaborated on the memoir, contributing her side of the story through poems, published under the name J. Hope Stein.
In a career spanning four decades, Dickey authored seven books and reported from more than 40 countries, often covering war, conflict and espionage. He died July 16. Originally broadcast in 1998.
Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump Jr., was Donald Trump's older brother and the black sheep of the family. After Fred Jr.'s death in 1981, Mary Trump's grandfather changed his will to exclude Mary and her brother. She writes about her family's tangled history in the new memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.
Michaela Coel says she initially wanted to create a series about sexual assault because of her own experiences. But as she heard from other people who had similar stories, she began to think more broadly. "I realized that many people had some sort of experience that was connected to mine," she says. "There were so many different ways to explore consent and how it affects us today. What better place for a story than one that I felt many people could find an identification in?"
Smith began Intimations: Six Essays at the onset of the pandemic and finished it shortly after George Floyd's killing. Although only 100 pages, there's something worth quoting on virtually every page.
"I saw firsthand how police and prosecutors manipulate evidence, coerce witnesses into giving false testimony," says Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries. His memoir is When Truth is All You Have.
