Ever since I was young, I've loved stories set in the far-flung reaches of the West's many empires — from the British Raj of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India to the surreal Vietnam of Apocalypse Now. And I still love them, though I now realize that they usually look at other cultures from the vantage point of outsiders, even intruders.
For trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran, gun violence is a very personal issue. He has treated hundreds of gun wound victims, comforted anxious loved ones and told mothers and fathers that their children would not be coming home.
But Sakran's empathy for his patients and their families extends beyond the hospital. Sakran knows the pain of gun violence because he is a survivor of it; when he was 17, he took a bullet to the throat after a high school football game.
New York Times Magazine journalist Robert Draper talks about why Republicans love to attack Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the challenges she faces within her own party and her bid to be speaker of the House.
Gordon started out as a bebop prodigy in the '40s, and went on to star in the '86 film 'Round Midnight. Maxine Gordon captures her late husband's voice and music in the book Sophisticated Giant.
Though he's widely considered one of the best country-music artists of all time, Frizzell's music is not well known or widely heard today. Ken Tucker says An Article From Life aims to correct that.
Immunologist Daniel Davis says scientists are harnessing the power of the immune system to create new medications to fight cancer, auto-immune conditions and other diseases.
McLorin Salvant's powerful voice takes center state on her new album, a duo with pianist Sullivan Fortner. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says the music on The Window is riveting.
Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz vie for the favor an ailing Queen Anne in a new comedy-drama set in the 18th century. Justin Chang says it's director Yorgos Lanthimos' most "emotionally resonant work."
John Powers reviews two new series based on true crime stories. Dannemora dramatizes the story of a 2015 prison break. Dirty John follows the delusions and dangers of a woman falling for a conman.
Tommy Caldwell & Kevin Jorgeson talk about their historic ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite. They climbed the most difficult face, the Dawn Wall, free style. After 19 days in 2015 they made it to the top. A new documentary tells their story.
The Coen brothers pay homage to old Westerns with their new film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The movie is a collection of six stories that often subvert the expectations of the genre.
AMC's decision to show its new six-hour miniseries The Little Drummer Girl over three consecutive nights is a smart strategy. This spy story, based on the bestselling novel by John Le Carré, begins at such a deliberate pace that it takes almost two hours before the central story line — the actual spy mission — is set in motion.
Steve McQueen's new film centers on four women who come together to pull off a $5 million robbery. Critic Justin Chang says as gripping as it is, Widows never feels like mere escapism.
A new video series by New York Times reporter Adam Ellick explores Russia's role in spreading fake news, dating back to the '80s conspiracy theory that the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. military.
The Walking Dead actor plays a South Korean playboy who may or may not be murdering his girlfriends in Burning. "To this day, I'm the only one who knows who Ben really is," Yeun says of the character.
President Trump has a penchant for breathing new life into expressions with troubled pasts, like "America first" and "enemy of the people." It's not likely his uses of those phrases will survive his presidency. But he may have altered the political lexicon more enduringly at a Houston rally two weeks before the elections, when he proclaimed himself a "nationalist" and urged his supporters to use the word.
Sandi Tan was 19 when she wrote and starred in a film directed by her 40-year-old mentor. Then her mentor disappeared with the film footage. Twenty years later, Tan chronicles the mystery in Shirkers.
Billionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes has long been regarded as one of Hollywood's most eccentric and prolific playboys. A few years back, writer and film critic Karina Longworth stumbled onto an online message board, listing women Hughes had had sexual relationships with — just a list of names, no other information.
"In each of these names there's a whole life and a whole story," says Longworth, who hosts the film podcast You Must Remember This.
Take Meg Wolitzer's novel (now also a film) called The Wife, about a brazen case of literary ghostwriting, and cross it with Patricia Highsmith's classic Ripley stories, about a suave psychopath, and you've got something of the crooked charisma of John Boyne's new novel, A Ladder to the Sky.
