Busy Behind the Scenes, But With Daily Sense of Mission and Purpose
Sara Brown

When Alyssa Mastromonaco visited the Vineyard as acting chief of staff for President Obama, the beach had to wait. Work didn’t stop for the White House team when the President was on vacation.

Read More

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Has Become the New Political Normal
Chloe Reichel

Richard North Patterson was a political novelist, but he doesn’t write novels anymore. Non-fiction is too compelling. Fever Swamp, Mr. Patterson’s latest book, is an accounting of the 2016 election.

Read More

Lost and Found Does Not Include Everyone
Vivian Ewing

Julie Buntin was the kind of girl who would take out 25 library books at one time. Growing up in Petoskey, a town of 5,500 in northern Michigan, winters were bleak. Reading was the main activity.

Read More

Eating Her Way Through New England; Research Can Be Such a Delicious Read
Elizabeth Bennett

Chefs and eaters everywhere rejoiced when Sarah Leah Chase published New England Open-House Cookbook in 2015, after a hiatus of nearly two decades.

Read More

Taking a Hard Look at Patriarchy, Guided by Faith and Medicine
Heather Hamacek

In his new book Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, Dr. Willie Parker argues against allowing sexism, racism and religion to set the standard of morals in the abortion debate.

Read More

The Wandering Road of Destiny May Be Confusing at Every Turn
Chloe Reichel

How did I get here? Richard Russo’s latest short story collection, Trajectory, takes up this question again and again, looking back over the lives of its characters to trace their journeys.

Read More

Chronicling the Fight Against Racial Progress
Alex Elvin

Ms. Anderson’s book White Rage, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner, presents a brief but incisive look at achieving civil rights in the United States.

Read More

When the Odds Favor the House, It's Still Important to Feel Lucky
Vivian Ewing

Min Jin Lee's novel Pachinko is a nearly 500-page book that follows one family for seven tumultuous decades. Cultures clash and fates spiral. Wars are fought and babies are born.

Read More

The Cult of Infatuation Is a Dangerous Game
Chloe Reichel

Danzy Senna’s latest novel, New People, occupies the uneasy space between horror and humor. “I like that slight feeling of anxiety that those two poles create,” Ms. Senna said.

Read More

A Cultural Zelig, Jessica Harris Embraces the Muse of Her History
Alex Elvin

Jessica Harris's memoir, My Soul Looks Back, revisits her relationship to Samuel Clemens Floyd 3rd, whose orbit included many of the leading black voices in New York city.

Read More

Pages