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| Our history, wrote David McCullough (1933-2022), is “our greatest natural resource.” The biographer of John Adams and Harry Truman, the chronicler of the Johnstown Flood and the settling of the Northwest Territory, died this week at the age of 89, leaving behind a shelf of books that constitute their own endlessly renewable source of energy and inspiration for readers. McCullough was signally adept at recognizing the power of what he called “The American Story” to stir the national imagination, even in an era when the idea of such a unifying narrative was characterized as retrograde. Reviewing his 2017 collection “The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For,” Robert W. Merry weighed in on McCullough’s essential sincerity. “What stands out in these portraits,” Mr. Merry notes, “is how utterly devoid they are of the cynicism that infuses so much of contemporary culture.” Characteristically, the historian remained hopeful about his country and his fellow Americans, saying “I think we will find our course.” —C.C.
Books Editor
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| Magic Numbers: The mistrust of interest, which can accelerate the growth of a small investment or rapidly increase the cost of a debt, has been around as long as wealth has been borrowed or lent. More than 4,000 years ago, two Mesopotamian city-states went to war over the interest owed on a grain transaction. Since that moment, governments have tried to control the power of the financial force that Daniel Defoe called a “canker-worm.” Those efforts have not always gone as planned. Adam Rowe on “The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest” by Edward Chancellor. Read the review |
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| | | |  | | Rules
By Lorraine Daston In the sixth century, the “Rule of Benedict” was a comprehensive guide to monastic life, but its chapters left room for the discretion of the abbot’s choices. The algorithms that govern us today are often more precise, and more rigid. Read the review |
 | | Existential Physics
By Sabine Hossenfelder Physicists are often saddled with some of our most puzzling questions: What caused the big bang? Do we live in a multiverse of parallel realities? Could this all be a simulation? But science may not be up to the task of answering them. Read the review |
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| “Do No Harm”: In Robert Pobi’s latest, astrophysicist Lucas Page races to identify a serial killer targeting doctors. Read the review |
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| Scandal Sheet: “Would you like to sin/ With Elinor Glyn/ On a tiger skin?” So went a popular bit of doggerel that followed the sensational 1907 publication of Elinor Glyn’s novel “Three Weeks.” In her blockbuster, a mysteriously exotic woman embarks on a torrid affair (including a memorable tiger-rug scene) with an inexperienced Englishman, schooling him in the arts of passion before disappearing. Readers were shocked, inflamed or both: A modern, female-centric mode of romance was born. Jeanine Basinger on “Inventing the It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood” by Hilary A. Hallett. Read the review |
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| “Haven”: The titular heroine of Megan Wagner Lloyd’s novel is a small, tender-hearted cat who rises to the occasion to protect her elderly owner. Read the review |
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| | | |  | | The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Poems
Edited by Edward Mendelson “We must love one another or die,” became one of W.H. Auden’s most famous lines. Looking back, the writer worried over its truthfulness. The whole poem, he decided, had to go. Read the review |
 | | Elizabeth Finch
By Julian Barnes After a uniquely compelling professor dies, one of her former students is bequeathed her papers in a novel that takes in modern academia and the brief career of a mercurial Roman emperor. Read the review |
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| Was It All in Their Heads? The Cold War was a mind-bending, decadeslong stalemate in which a nuclear battle could be threatened but never fought. It is tempting to see the entire standoff as a kind of global psychopathology, with both sides succumbing to paranoia. But was this so? Stalin had no interest in peace, stability or prosperity for Europe, which he expected would sooner or later fall under Soviet domination. Stephen Budiansky on “The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind” by Martin Sixsmith. Read the review |
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| The author, most recently, of “Hitler’s Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WWII.” Read the article |
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- ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars By Martin Pugh (2005)
- The Red Book: The Membership List of the Right Club, 1939 Edited by Robin Saikia (2010)
- Wigs on the Green By Nancy Mitford (1935)
- The Origins of Totalitarianism By Hannah Arendt (1951)
- Why Liberalism Failed By Patrick J. Deneen (2018)
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