Emily Eakin

In “The Sleeping Beauties,” Suzanne O’Sullivan examines those poorly understood conditions that fall at the tangled intersection of body and mind, like mysterious outbreaks of mass illness.

If you can’t wait to read the U.S. government’s report about U.F.O.s, try one of these seven books.

Even for those of us who read for a living, there’s nothing better than diving into a new book.

In “We Keep the Dead Close,” Becky Cooper explores a killing she heard rumors about when she was a student, at a school where such crimes have become a rarefied literary genre.

Is romance the most scripted human experience there is?

The former Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh, charged with fraud over her “Healthy Holly” children’s series, isn’t the first elected official who’s run into book trouble.

“The Great Pretender,” the new book by the author of “Brain on Fire,” is another medical detective story, but this time the person at the heart of the mystery is a doctor, not a patient.

Tim Alberta speaks to us about “American Carnage,” his gripping new account of the Republican Party.

Mary Pipher’s “Women Rowing North” celebrates the unacknowledged talents and wisdom of older women — a demographic increasingly in the limelight.

Marie Benedict writes books inspired by women whose achievements have been overlooked by history, including Einstein’s first wife and the film star and inventor Hedy Lamarr.

2018 was a good year for books. Some of the authors we admire weigh in on their favorite reads.

In “Interior States,” Megan O’Gieblyn reconsiders her evangelical upbringing, and in “What if This Were Enough?” Heather Havrilesky renounces the “enforced cheer” of American culture.

Tyson’s new book shows how the technologies that advanced our knowledge of the universe were designed with military advantage in mind.

In “The Day You Begin,” a picture book inspired by her great-grandfather, and “Harbor Me,” a middle-grade novel, Woodson explores the transformative power of storytelling.

Ron Stallworth joined the Klan as a black detective working undercover in 1978. Now his memoir, “Black Klansman,” is a best seller — and an acclaimed film.

“Quiet Until the Thaw” follows two reservation boys whose lives become fatefully intertwined.

Peter Ho Davies’s four-part novel “The Fortunes” summons key faces and events in the Chinese-American story.

In stories sprung from the rural Midwest, women draw on their deepest strengths.

Threats, real and imagined, loom in the lives of restive New Yorkers.

Lily King’s novel “Euphoria,” inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, is about a love triangle in New Guinea.

In Katherine Rundell’s middle-grade novel, an orphan befriends children who live on top of Parisian buildings.

Napoleon Chagnon tramped through a rain forest, uncovering the lives of indigenous tribes. But to some, he’s anything but a hero.

Is there a scientific explanation for the human ability to use language?

Emily Eakin reviews book Artificial White Man, The: Essays on Authenticity by Stanley Crouch; photo (M)

Article on current fixation on Alexander the Great, subject of new movie by Oliver Stone, History Channel and Discovery Channel documentaries and several books; photos (M)

Article on new Eve Ensler play The Good Body and Neil LaBute play Fat Pig, both of which deal with characters' problems with weight; looks at America's attitude toward fat and desire for 'quick fix'; drawing (M)

Profile of Caraid O'Brien, 29, Irish-born Catholic actress, playwright, translator and Yiddish expert who is instructor for Great Dramas of the Yiddish Stage; lecture series is part of 92nd Street Y's celebration of 350th anniversary of Jews in America; photo (M)

Era of big theory came quietly to close with death on Oct 8 of French philosopher Jacques Derrida; deconstruction, Derrida's primary legacy, was method of analysis intended to show that no piece of writing is exactly what it seems, but is laden with ambiguities and contradictions; term has become meaningless artifact of popular culture (M)

Emily Eakin reviews following books: Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton; and The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity by Michael Marmot; drawing (M)

Emily Eakin Think Tank column traces history of word miscegenation, which first appeared in pamphlet in New York City, fraud perpetrated by two journalists at pro-Democratic newspaper seeking to turn voters against Pres Abraham Lincoln; focuses on new book An Anthology of Interracial Literature: Black-White Contacts in the Old World and the New, edited by Harvard Prof Werner Sollors; photo (M)

Anne Fadiman, editor of American Scholar, one of US's premier literary journals, says she has been dismissed by publisher, Phi Beta Kappa Society, over budget dispute; society secretary and journal publisher John Churchill disputes account, saying she has not been fired but that he expects her to resign; photo (M)

Survey by social-network analyst Valdis Krebs of readers of 66 popular political books concludes that buyers of liberal books buy only other liberal books while buyers of conservative books buy only other conservative books; study appears to back up argment by University of Chicago law Prof Cass Sunstein that contemporary media and Internet abet culture of polarization (M)

In February 1766, taken aback by the violent reaction to the Stamp Act, its latest attempt to impose taxes on the restive American colonies, Britain summoned Benjamin Franklin to Parliament in London. The interview, which lasted several hours, was less than friendly. The Americans, Franklin reminded his interrogators, were voracious consumers of British goods, buying them at a rate that far exceeded the colonies' staggering population growth. But this lucrative spending habit, he warned, should not be taken for granted. The colonists could either produce necessities themselves or do without, he testified. As for ''mere articles of fashion,'' he said, they ''will now be detested and rejected.''

Article on assertion in forthcoming book, The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why, that pronounced economic disparities occur not just between families but within them; sociologist Dalton Conley, director of New York University's Center for Advanced Social Science Research, citing numerous celebrity siblings, says there is enormous sibling inequality that is swept under the rug in America; photos (L)

Article on Yale Law School Prof Amy Chua, who comments, in interview, on her assertion that bringing free markets and elections to developing nations leads to hate-mongering, discrimination and even genocidal violence; Chua, author of World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, says ethnicity is taboo topic in West and that much of developing world is starkly divided along ethnic lines; photo (M)

Think Tank column on University of Iowa communication studies Prof Mark Andrejevic's take on post-cold-war generation of Americans who view prospect of living under surveillance as cool rather than scary; Andrejevic, whose new book is Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, says reality shows glamorize surveillance, presenting it as hip attribute of contemporary world; also says reality television is propaganda for new business model that only pretends to give consumers more control while subjecting them to increasingly sophisticated forms of monitoring and manipulation (M)

Article on Franco Moretti, professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford and director of university's center for study of the novel, who holds that more rational way to study literary history is to replace close reading of canon of about 200 novels in any given period or place with abstract models borrowed from sciences; Moretti's quantitative method, which he describes in article in November/December issue of New Left Review, is latest in long line of efforts to make literary criticism look more like science; photo (M)

Emily Eakin Think Tank column on University of Georgia historian Peter Charles Hoffer's new book Sensory Worlds in Early America; Hoffer argues that culture clashes in New World were result of profound differences in ways English settlers and Indians perceived themselves and one another through the senses; book is latest in campaign to elevate the five senses to central place in study of history; drawing (M)

Article on powerful and growing breed of social entrepreneurs who combine market savvy with social conscience; J B Schramm, founder of College Summit, organization that helps low-income high school students who might not otherwise continue their educations apply to college, says eliminating college 'market gap' will lower poverty rate; New York lawyer and labor activist Sara Horowitz founded Working Today, which provides low-cost health insurance to freelancers, who now make up nearly a third of labor force; other well known social entrepreneurs include Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp, Dr Paul Farmer, who is transforming global healthcare policy toward indigent, Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who revolutionized concept of micro-credit, and William Drayton, founder of Ashoka, which gives financial and professional support to social entrepreneurs; drawing; photo (M)

Article on John McWhorter, linguist and cultural critic whose new book is Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care; McWhorter, in interview, discusses how much language of public speeches by Americans has deteriorated; says fault lies in disappearance of distinction between the written and the oral; photo (M)

Profile of French-born Loic Wacquant, 43, professor of sociology at University of California at Berkeley who took up boxing in poor black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side as graduate student; English translation of his book, Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, is being published later this month; photos (M)

Profile of and interview with controversial social scientist Charles Murray whose latest book, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950, is expected to stir more ire; Murray uses relatively obscure statistical method known as historiometry to back his assertion of Western civilization's scientific and artistic superiority; photo; graphs (M)

THE CREATIVE HABIT Learn It and Use It for Life. A Practical Guide. By Twyla Tharp with Mark Reiter. Illustrated. 243 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $25.

Trinity College neurophilosopher Dan Lloyd's new novel, Radiant Cool, discussed as example of latest cultural twist in which scientists are writing fictional works in order to explain their theories; Lloyd uses noir thriller genre in effort to show that consciousness is personal, idiosyncratic and bound up with time; examples of books by other scientists cited; photo (M)

Profile of choreographer and dancer Akram Khan, known for his grace and atheleticism; novel meld of East and West make his fledgling company's performances one of most talked about in dance world; photos (M)

Battle between liberals and conservatives moves to The New York Times best-seller lists, where books by Al Franken and others have ended almost decade of dominance by right-wing authors, lately represented by Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter; major current titles discussed (M)

Profile of and interview with novelist William Vollmann, who comments on his enthusiasm for guns and his latest work, Rising Up and Rising Down, a 7-volume, 3,000-page study of the ethics of violence; photos (M)

Profile of and interview with author Charles Baxter, 56, of Minneapolis, Minn; Baxter, who has written four collections of short stories and three novels, comments on his new novel, Saul and Patsy; photo (M)

Article on exhibition of papers, books and other documents written by Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr on view at Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan; collection will be offered for private sale, not auction, on behalf of King estate; photo (M)

All 23 Broadway productions run as scheduled after power is restored to most of New York City's Theater District and several sell out; League of American Theaters and Producers president Jed Bernstein says industry probably lost $1 million from performances canceled during massive blackout, although producers hope some patrons will exchange tickets; museums and other NYC cultural institutions are still struggling to reopen; photo (M)

Article on British architect and computer software programmer Christopher Alexander, designer of West Dean Gardens visitors' center in West Sussex, who has dedicated himself to architecture based on what he calls objective science of beauty and software design known as object-oriented programming; Alexander comments on his new four-volume opus, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe; photos (M)

Article on increased interest in stupidity, which has sparked revival of stupid clubs and success of Dumb and Dumber movies; English translation of Matthijs van Boxsel's 1999 Encyclopedia of Stupidity has just been published by Reaktion Books; photo (M)

Profile of and interview with Adam Bellow, author of new book, In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History; Bellow says US is undergoing vast revival of what he calls 'hereditary principle' and maintains nepotism has evolved culturally in America into meritocratic nepotism; photo (M)

Foreign Broadcast Information Service linguist William C Hannas addresses complexities of Asian writing systems and blames limitations of those writing systems for East Asia's failure to make scientific and technological progress at same rate as Western nations in book The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity; photo (M)

Emily Eakin reviews Thomas W Laqueur book Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, which chronicles social responses to masturbation over time, with specific focus on moral panic it caused in 1700's; photo (M)

Partisan Review, a journal of culture and politics that was beacon of liberal anti-Stalinism and a forum for many of America's most brilliant intellectuals and writers, folded this week after more than 66 years. It introduced Americans to Abstract Expressionism and helped spread the ideas of European thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Albert Camus. Emily Eakin

Dr Antonio Damasio book Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain defends Dutch philospher Spinoza's early theories on links between brain, reasoning and human emotion; photos (M)

Editors of Critical Inquiry gather nation's most notable literary theorists and academics at Chicago University to debate merits of criticism and theory; photo (M)

Partisan Review, quarterly journal of culture and politics that emerged from ideological ferment of 1930's to become house organ for generation of brilliant American intellectuals and writers, is ceasing publication after 66 years; circulation has dwindled to about 3,200; co-founder and editor in chief William Phillips died last year, after which ownership of journal reverted to Boston Univ, its major financial backer; Chancellor John Silber makes decision to close it down (M)

Emily Eakin reviews Lifetime TV program Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, starring Thora Birch; photo (M)

Journal of Military Ethics is started to address moral dilemmas facing the military, such as whether soldiers owe their commanders unquestioned obedience at all times, whether they have moral duty to uphold human rights and what happens when military orders and demands of conscience come into conflict; inaugural issue examines case of Capt Lawrence P Rockwood, who was court-martialed by US Army after trying to investigate human rights in Haiti; photo (M)

Profile of Gaspar Noe, director of Irreversible, extremely violent French film; during Cannes Festival showing, two dozen viewers in audience became ill enough to need medical care; Noe says he wants to make 'philosophical point about humanity's bestial nature'; photos (L)

Emily Eakin Shelf Life column discusses correspondance between poet T S Eliot and Jewish philosopher Horace Kallen, in which Eliot urged Kallen to help him find refuge for Jewish friend in America; widely-held belief that Eliot was anti-semitic, which was revealed in poetry and in lectures he gave, could perhaps be modified by such writings, but most scholars are not convinced that Eliot was not prejudiced; photo (M)

Profile of and interview with novelist Richard Powers, who is widely considered country's pre-eminent literary chronicler of technological age; his new novel is The Time of Our Singing; photo (M)

Science of network theory, which studies networks of anything from teenagers to protein cells to make broad and relevant predictions about larger issues, is gaining in both mass appeal and societal importance; almost every industry from advertising to finance is using network theory in some capacity to connect seemingly random objects or 'nodes' and make conclusions about network's behavior as group; photos (M)

David Engerman, Brandeis University historian, rediscovers handbook published by New York State branch of Communist Party in late 1930's while browsing in university's collection of radical pamphlets; manuscript is 15-page tutorial in art of ideologically correct fraternizing--Give a Party for the Party; excerpts; drawing (M)

Collection of letters, speehes, photographs and journals belonging to Malcolm X will be made available to scholars under terms of agreement between his family and New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem; Howard Dodson, center's director, says diaries capture evolution of Malcolm X's thoughts on race and religion in more unvarnished detail than his autobiography and other published histories; Shabazz family reaches settlement with James Calhoun, who acquired material in blind public action in Sept 2001 after family fell behind on rental payments for storage locker in Florida; photos (M)

The editors of Arts & Ideas asked scholars and writers to propose the most overrated and the most underrated ideas of the past year.

Iraq's voluminous weapons declaration to UN discussed as tactic to convince world it has no weapons of mass destruction; photo (M)

Emily Eakin reviews following books: Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France by Christine Pevitt Algrant; Madame de Pompadour: A Life by Evelyne Lever; and Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress by Colin Jones; drawing (M)

Sumptuous neoplatonist feast is held at Pierpont Morgan Library, NYC; in library's soaring atrium, guests sit at candlelit tables sipping spiced wine, others stand listening as delicate Renaissance melodies are played; with tiny silver seafood forks, they pick at plates heaped high with tempting morsels; Carolin C Young, dining historian and evening's scholarly MC, comments on art of 15th-century dining; Young, 33, is one of new breed of food studies scholars who view meals not as ephemeral events of passing biological significance but rather as windows onto a culture's most pressing concerns; Young bases her banquet on feast originally staged by nine 15th-cenutry Italian humanists in villa outside Florence; photos (M)

''Your species will make perfect slaves for our dung mines!'' gloats Kor-Guu, the giant purple space beetle, wielding a glinting dagger in one hairy insect claw. ''Come out and fight, you frail little thing. Let survival of the fittest decide this planet's fate!'' The old man clutching a wooden staff bravely stands his ground. ''You fiend!'' he shrieks. ''We'll fight you to the bitter end!''

Two-day Columbia University conference on free expression and arts features heated discussions on artistic freedom in high-tech culture, from perspective of scholars, activists, artists, foundation officers and media executives; many observe that free speech often takes backseat to problems of copyright law where it infringes on artistic expression (M)

Eureka, Edgar Allan Poe's 1848 prose poem on nature and origin of universe, provides rudimentary version of Big Bang theory, describes an expanding universe that might ultimately collapse and even envisions something like black holes; history of astrophysics is littered with such 'prediscoveries' or 'instances of theoretical anticipation,' according to Tom Siegfried, author of Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time; photos (M)

Emily Eakin reviews book Equals by Adam Phillips (M)

Two new books are reviving old accusations that Mormon leader Brigham Young masterminded massacre of 120 men, women and children who were slain at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah on Sept 11, 1857 by Mormon militia and Indian allies; church has long denied responsibility, first blaming Indians and then rogue churchman, John D Lee, for one of worst American civilian atrocities of 19th-century, but books by journalists Will Bagley and Sally Denton outline case against Young; murdered pioneers were bound for California from Arkansas, led by Alexander Fancher, when they were killed; drawings; Federal investigators suspected Young but lacked evidence against powerful Mormon leader who ran territory as theocracy, flouting federal law; church version is that Fancher party taunted Mormon settlers and poisoned Indian wells (M)

Two conflicting new studies revive controversy over Vinland Map, which famously describes Viking discovery of North America, and was donated to Yale by Paul Mellon in 1957; article in Radiocarbon dates parchment at 1434, but report in Analytical Chemistry argues that mineral anatase in ink indicates 20th-century origin; forgery camp gets fresh ammunition from Norwegian historian, Kirsten A Seaver, who says German Jesuit priest named Josef Fischer made map as private protest against Nazi regime; curator Robert Karrow says Fischer seems plausible; avid scholar and map collector wrote 1902 book on theory that Norse came to North America long before Columbus; photos of map and Fischer, who died in 1944; Vinland map, laden with Catholic imagery, could be sly dig at Hitler's Aryan supremacy doctrine (M)

New Yorkers have called on city's legion of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals in year since Sept 11 terrorist attacks, although state official Chip Felton notes that sheer scale of event dwarfed mental-health plans for coping with disasters; trauma experts warned that emotional force of attacks was so strong that even people used to coping on their own would seek help, and that others with severe post-traumatic stress might not come forward for months or years; response was probably nation's largest, and least stigmatized, offer of free mental health treatment; problem became that, while there was no shortage of help, few practitioners were trained in disaster response; predictions of stress were accurate, but more surprising has been resilience as vast majority of people have found ways to cope and go on with their lives; photos (L)

Emily Eakin discusses Matthew Lewis book The Monk, Gothic shocker published in 1796 that is being reissued this month by Oxford University Press with new introduction by Stephen King; photo (M)

Dwijendra Narayan Jha's book Holy

Emily Eakin article suggests that Weblogs, online sites promoting all manner of opinion, are modern-day equivalent of pamphlets through which Milton, Swift, Paine and Orwell disseminated their dissenting views; welcomes revival of old-fashioned, off-line pamphleteering by Open Media and Prickly Paradigm Press; photo (M)

Emily Eakin reviews book Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex From Animals by Marlene Zuk (M)

Justin Vaisse, professor of Institute of Political Science in Paris, says US is undergoing another upsurge in francophobia, which he says is not fair criticism of France but systematic American bias against France, similar to French anti-Americanism; he and others say genuine concerns about anti-Semitic incidents in France, which have helped fuel rise in American francophobia, often give way to crude caricatures of French; photo (M)

Dr Arnold M Ludwig, emeritus professor of psychiatry at University of Kentucky, publishes book King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership; in his 18 years of research, studying 377 rulers from last 100 years, he develops Political Greatness Scale, latest in long line of scholarly attempts to measure political leadership; his criterion discussed; photos of some great leaders (M)

Group of prominent conservative thinkers and writers, Irving Kristol, Hilton Kramer, Gertrude Himmelfarb and John Patrick Diggins, will boycott conference on philosopher Sidney Hook because of invitation to Cornel West, celebrity intellectual; Diggins later changes his mind and says he will attend conference, to be held in October at Graduate Center of City University of New York; photos (M)

Everyone knows a snob when he sees one. But there is considerably less agreement about exactly what makes one a snob.

Author Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar and, by his own admission, a snob, discusses his new book Snobbery: The American Version; says snobbery is peculiarly modern condition, byproduct of social fluidity that democracy makes possible; explains that condescending, haughty behavior was pointless when one's place in social order was fixed forever at birth; photo; Thackery drawing (M)

Article discusses Prof Richard Florida's theory that towns with many gays and artistically creative people tend to thrive; list of 10 most creative American cities, utilizing Florida's criteria; drawing (M)

Michael C Corballis, psychologist at University of Auckland in New Zealand, is latest proponent of controversial theory that holds that early humans communicated with their hands long before they spoke; gestural theory is subject in his book From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language; photos (L)

Oxford University Prof Richard Swinburne, using probability formula known as Bayes's theorem, has calculated probability of Jesus Christ's Resurrection occurred as 97 percent; Swinburne's efforts to bring inductive logic to bear on questions of faith have earned him considerable reputation in small but vibrant world of Christian academic philosophy; Christian philosophers, deploying range of sophisticated logical arguments developed over last 25 years, have revived faith as subject of rigorous academic debate, steadily chipping away at assumption that belief in God is logically indefensible; drawing (M)