October 9, 2025 Issue

Verlyn Klinkenborg

‘Such Flexible Intensity of Life’

Their striking intelligence makes octopuses tempting subjects for wishful anthropomorphism and uncanny reminders of nature’s mysteries.

Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses

by David Scheel, with illustrations by Laurel “Yoyo” Scheel

Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World

by Craig Foster

Frances Wilson

Charlotte Under Pressure

Elizabeth Gaskell’s greatest novel may have been her biography of Charlotte Brontë.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life

by Graham Watson

Randall Mann

Ledger

a poem

Adam Thirlwell

When and Where Is Home?

The South Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s replicas of places he has lived are extraordinary feats of magical engineering.

Do Ho Suh: Walk the House

an exhibition at Tate Modern, London, May 1–October 26, 2025. Catalog of the exhibition edited by Nabila Abdel Nabi and Dina Akhmadeeva with Amie Corry

Hari Kunzru

Surviving the Manosphere

Adolescence illustrates how, in the hypercapitalist competition of toxic masculinity online, teenagers have the most to lose.

Adolescence

a television series written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini

Brenda Wineapple

A Helluva Town

A new history of New York City during World War II captures the glory, tawdriness, poverty, narcissism, beauty, and grime of this “aggregation of villages.”

Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945

by Mike Wallace

Christopher de Bellaigue

The Ayatollah’s Kingly Woe

The Supreme Leader’s frail health and Israel’s recent attacks have left the Islamic Republic on the brink of paralysis.

Scott W. Stern

Writing Their Prison’s History

A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

Who Would Believe a Prisoner? Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848–1920

by the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project, edited by Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Nelson, with a preface by Kelsey Kauffman

Leslie T. Chang

At the Chinese Table

To understand the Chinese through their culinary history is to see them in their best lights—as inventive, adaptable, egalitarian, and open-minded.

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food

by Fuchsia Dunlop

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

by Fuchsia Dunlop

Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways

by Jin Feng

China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History

by Thomas David DuBois

Jane Hirshfield

Cows Lying Down

a poem

Neal Ascherson

A Daring Escape

A painstaking investigation into twelve prisoners who tunneled to freedom from the Nazis in Lithuania reveals how much of their story remains unknowable.

No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust

by Chris Heath

Gregory Hays

Profiles in Power

As Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars and Peter Stothard’s Palatine show, the real currency in ancient Rome was flattery.

Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern

by Mary Beard

Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World

by Mary Beard

Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars

by Peter Stothard

Dorothy Sue Cobble

I Stand Here Ironing

At a moment of unparalleled assault on state social services, a new book recovers the daring ideas of a movement that struggled to win compensation for domestic workers and caregivers in the home.

Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor

by Emily Callaci

Joshua Hammer

Slaughter for Hire

From Africa to Ukraine, the rise and fall of the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was marked by theatrical violence, the seizure of resources, and an utter lack of accountability.

Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare

by John Lechner

Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos

by Candace Rondeaux

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army

by Jack Margolin

David Schurman Wallace

Road to Nowhere

Marguerite Young’s cult novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling springs from the supposedly mundane diners and bus depots of Young’s native Indiana, but eschews any stable sense of reality.

Miss MacIntosh, My Darling

by Marguerite Young, with an introduction by Meghan O’Gieblyn

The Collected Poems

by Marguerite Young, edited by Phil Bevis, Joshua Rothes, and Jacob Siefring

Catherine Nicholson