Ukraine’s battle against Russia has become a defining event of our time, testing the limits of Western will and demonstrating how an emerging democracy can fight against a larger, belligerent power. Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the CEO of the nonprofit Freedom House, is not an impartial commentator, and he clearly …
Though many may assume that misogyny was pervasive in the ancient world, the author spotlights the hunter-gatherer society of Çatalhöyük (in what is now Turkey), where men and women were considered equals. While racist historians have stated that Black Africans weren’t capable of great achievements, the author counters that claim by citing the city of …
The author, who established himself as a maker of intricate puzzles with his first novel, The Quincunx (1989), provides another in this wartime tale of a family’s efforts to protect a young girl from a vicious enemy. This is not a portrait of World War II Europe or a fictionalized account of Anne Frank’s life. …
The story opens with “Dear Jaan,” the first line of a letter from 1972 that’s a beckoning to romance—a romance that rumor says ended in flames in Hartceller University’s Davidson Tower. Cut to the present day: Jessie Ahuja is at Hartceller, studying hard to become an engineer. She refuses to be distracted by the extremely …
Claire Joyce loves basketball. John, one of her brothers, is a high school basketball star, though the kind of ball John and the other boys play is different from the sport available to girls like Claire—only certain “roving” players can move around the whole court in the girls’ games, and they have to wear restrictive …
Legal scholars Cahn, Carbone, and Levit argue persuasively that the persistent wage gap between men and women is a result of a “winner take all” (WTA) economy, in which workplaces offer increased rewards for top executives while pitting employees against each other. Those “calling the shots,” the authors attest, “engineer results that may not be …
In the year 2000, Edna Mann is an 81-year-old woman who’s been living alone after the death of her husband, Henry Mann, the previous year. Her only companion is a mysteriously long-lived plant, which Henry gave to her when they were children. Henry’s ailing sister, Ruth, and her niece, Grace Gill, live in another house …
The paradox of quality is that the better our products get, the more they are alike. Quality is contagious. It multiplies itself. Quality follows quality, which is why quality also converges. Take cars, for example. One of the key things people want from gasoline-powered cars is good gas mileage. Maximizing fuel efficiency involves many things, …
Baltimore-based Breanna Wright is at the “let’s take a trip” stage in her budding relationship with Ty Franklin, her first serious boyfriend in more than a decade. When he invites her to spend a long weekend with him at a luxurious Airbnb townhouse in Jersey City, where his company is based, Bree jumps at the …
Tildy Sullivan is the middle daughter of a wealthy New York family in decline. Her father, the third-generation scion of a cosmetics empire, is on the verge of bankruptcy. Her two sisters are shallow and oblivious sponges. Her data scientist mother is dead, having left Tildy an AI assistant named Russell and her stock in …
