Entertainment
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Ruins are a theme in this week’s recommended books, from the collapse of the Victoria’s Secret lingerie empire to the lives wasted by colonialism that Dionne Brand seeks out in classic British literature to the journalistic standards that lie trampled in the entertaining oral history “Paper of Wreckage,” about the tabloid excesses of The New York Post. We also recommend Yuval Noah Harari’s new history of human communication and Aaron Robertson’s study of Black utopianism; and, in fiction, new novels by Eva Baltasar and Alan Hollinghurst. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
PAPER OF WRECKAGE:
An Oral History of The New York Post, 1976-2024
Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo
This account traces the fate of one of America’s most flamboyant tabloid newspapers in the nearly 50 years since Rupert Murdoch took control of it in 1977, encouraging unforgettable headlines, a chortling tone and frothing-at-the-mouth politics that paved the way for another of his products, Fox News.
Credit…“A daily newspaper is like a play where you must strike the set every night. Post employees preferred to burn it down. … ‘Paper of Wreckage’ will probably be catnip if you are a writer, editor or journalism nut.”
From Dwight Garner’s review
Atria | $32.50
OUR EVENINGS
Alan Hollinghurst
Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize for his 2004 novel, “The Line of Beauty,” about glittering characters in early-1980s London as the AIDS crisis loomed in the background. Here, in his languorous, elegant seventh novel, he skewers the hidden and not-so-hidden bigotries that define Britain by tracing the life of his narrator, a Burmese English actor who grapples with race and ambition, sexuality and love.
Credit…“That rare bird: a muscular work of ideas and an engrossing tale of one man’s personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language.”
From Hamilton Cain’s review
Random House | $30
