Montage

Black and white photo of a large mushroom cloud rising above the horizon.

Open Book: A New Nuclear Age

Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s latest book looks at the rising danger of a new arms race.

Photograph of a carved relief showing orator dictating to a scribe, from the fourth-century Roman Temple of Hercules at Ostia Antica

Secretaries’ role in history of information

From a huge new book on the history of information, an excerpt on the role of secretaries

Portrait photograph of Maggie Shipstead

Novelist Maggie Shipstead and “Great Circle”

Maggie Shipstead’s time-spanning, globe-circling new novel

by Dan Kelly

Photograph of earth scientist Andrew Knoll at work in the field

Andrew Knoll, “A Brief History of Earth,” reviewed by Jonathan Shaw

Andrew Knoll on the planet’s past—and fraught future

by Jonathan Shaw

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Historic photograph of heap of fabric scraps

Excerpt from “Shoddy,” by Hanna Rose Shell

“From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags”—a surprising account of scrap

An illustration showing a human head in profile, suggesting the elements of distinctive Western psychology

Excerpt from “The WEIRDEST People in the World,” by Joseph Henrich

Reinterpreting the distinctive psychology of the human West

Photograph of author Justin Deabler

“Lone Stars”—an HLS grad’s semi-autobiographical debut novel

Fiction about “the power that comes to us when we uncloset ourselves”

by Lydialyle Gibson

Historic images of Francis Drake and Elizabeth I, who feature in a new book by Laurence Bergreen

Recent books with Harvard connections

Recent books with Harvard connections

Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Photo of a cheerleader group composed of elderly women, all in red tops and white skirts, with pompoms

“Some Kind of Heaven,” a documentary by Lance Oppenheim

Documentarian Lance Oppenheim explores life in The Villages.

by Alex Huls