A More Perfect Union

A new year means new books are on the way! So many new books. On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the upcoming fiction and nonfiction titles they’re most anticipating between now and April.Here are t ... Show More

Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025: a slow-burn success story that gathered momentum over the summer and fall and finally topped the New York Times hardcover best-s ... Show More

Ian McEwan’s latest novel, “What We Can Know,” is many things at once: It’s a science fiction imagining of a future world devastated by climate catastrophe; it’s a literary mystery about a scholar’s search for a long-lost poem; it’s a deep dive into complicated marriages; and it’ ... Show More

<p>In the highest-grossing movie of 2023, Barbie, a literal doll, leaves the comforts of Barbieland and ventures into real-world Los Angeles, where she discovers the myriad difficulties of modern womanhood. This arc from cosseted naïveté to feminist awakening is a narrative throu ... Show More

<p>We’re kicking off our new season this Valentine’s Day with a story from a Modern Love veteran.</p><p>David Finch has written three Modern Love essays about how hard he has worked to be a good husband to his beloved wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical ... Show More

<p>For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a formative period of life—and, by extension, into the historical moment in which it’s set. Vinson Cunningham sent the draft of “Great Expectations,” a book loosely based on his experience on Ba ... Show More

Elizabeth Day is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She has written 4 critically aclaimed novels, including The Party which was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Elizabeth is a currently columnist for You magazine on the Mail on Sunday and a feature writer for numerous public ... Show More

This week, Dana and Stephen are once again joined by Kat Chow, author of the memoir Seeing Ghosts. The panel begins by jumping into the ring with Cassandro, the oddly conflict-adverse biopic about the lucha libre superstar and exótico gay icon, Saúl Armendáriz, who is played terr ... Show More

<p>When Daniel Jones started the Modern Love column in 2004, he opened the call for submissions and hoped the idea would catch on. Twenty years later, over a thousand Modern Love essays have been published in The New York Times, and the column is a trove of real-life love stories ... Show More

Marriage takes the simple concept of procreation and turns it into a lifelong commitment that can, at times, lead to unexpected anger and resentment. As Mark Twain once said, "God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage.” A ... Show More

<p>George Eliot was a leading novelist who scandalised Victorian society by eloping to Germany with a married man and living in unlawful conjugal bliss. She dedicated her books to ‘her husband’ and wrote of 'this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength' ... Show More