Zadie Smith is justly celebrated for her chameleon-like gifts as a writer. In novels like White Teeth and On Beauty she's ventured deeply into the lives of a multi-racial assortment of immigrants to Great Britain and the United States. Her characters run the gamut from aspirational working-class kids, self-important academics, pensioners, young dancers and, to date, one Chinese-Jewish Londoner with a fixation on Golden Age Hollywood.
Growing up in rural Idaho, Tara Westover had no birth certificate, never saw a doctor and didn't go to school. Her parents were religious fundamentalists who stockpiled food, mistrusted the government and believed in strict gender roles for their seven children.
In more than three decades of work, Doug Jones has carved out a niche in the acting world by playing strange and otherworldly creatures. He was a demonic superhero in Hellboy and a monster with an appetite for children in Pan's Labyrinth.
Fifty years ago Monday, when Fred Rogers showed up on national public television as the host of what then was a brand new children's show called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, TV was a lot different. PBS wasn't even a network then — not by that name, anyway — and aside from CBS, NBC and ABC, there were only a few independent local channels to watch, if that.
Whitfield, who died Feb. 9, started in the San Francisco Opera in the 1970s before moving on to piano bars. She later performed regularly at New York's Algonquin Hotel. Originally broadcast in 1988.
New Yorker writer Jonathan Blitzer says President Trump uses the notorious gang to paint a portrait of rampant criminality among immigrants — and to frame the broader immigration debate.
As originally conceived in 1966, the Black Panther was an African king who fought crime in a high-tech panther suit. David Edelstein says Marvel's new film about the character was worth the wait.
Lamar plays a prominent role on the soundtrack for the new Marvel film. Critic Ken Tucker says the songs on Black Panther are are shrewd, passionate and "almost ridiculously entertaining."
Finn Murphy has logged over a million miles hauling people's belongings across the country to their new homes. He describes life on the road as a "reaction against regimentation."
Once known as "Pakistan's bravest citizen," Jahangir, who died Sunday, co-founded the country's first all-women's law firm and pushed for women's rights and democracy. Originally broadcast in 2001.
Since being forced from the White House and fired from Breitbart, Steve Bannon is still trying to affect policy in the White House and national politics. Joshua Green author of the bestselling book Devi's Bargain about Bannon's influence on Trump updates the story.
Religion scholar Kate Bowler used to believe God had a plan for her life. Then she was diagnosed with incurable colon cancer. "I really had to rethink what trust and hope looks like," she says.
Barlow, who died on Wednesday, was associated with the Grateful Dead since its early days. He went on to become a proponent of a free and open Internet. Originally broadcast in 1996.
In 2015, three Americans on a Paris-bound train stopped a terrorist attack in progress. Eastwood recreates the incident — and audaciously casts the real-life heroes as themselves — in his new film.
Critic Ken Tucker says he former ska/punk musician's new record is filled with "angry confusion," but Rosenstock also reveals himself as a singer-songwriter with a gift for delicate melodies.
Journalist Robert Draper writes in National Geographic that the proliferation of cameras focused on the public has led "to the point where we're expecting to be voyeur and exhibitionist 24/7."
The classic coming-to-New-York story was a mashup of a few pleasurably predictable elements: a young person with dreams bigger than his or her bank account, a few roach-ridden apartments and crummy jobs, some eccentric friends and neighbors, and a couple of requisite hard knocks before ... success!
Former Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper remembers a time, not so long ago, when he was barely aware of far-right media outlets like Alex Jones' Infowars and Breitbart News. That changed during the 2016 presidential race.
America's war in Afghanistan is the longest war the U.S. has ever fought. Beginning a month after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the initial mission was to remove the Taliban from power and destroy the al-Qaida terror network. Now, nearly 17 years later, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll points out that the war's goals have changed.
If you're a fan of thrillers, you know that they're defined by two extremes. At one end are the plot-driven worlds that work like clockwork machines (for instance, Murder on the Orient Express); at the other are the stories that sprawl outward to offer a portrait of the larger society (like James Ellroy's Los Angeles or Stieg Larsson's Sweden). As it turns out, I've recently come across an enjoyable example of each extreme.
