Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July
3 July - 52 minsThe United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, giving Americans a chance to reflect on the nation’s past and imagine its future.
Who better to help us make sense of this moment than Jill Lepore? The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and author of “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” joined the “Book Review” podcast to recommend some reading for the occasion. She also revisits the politics and drama of America’s previous birthdays, and discusses how a dystopian novel may be the most relevant read about the country right now.
After that, Elisabeth Egan, an editor at The Book Review, lays out some of the summer’s most an...
Series Episodes
Why We Can’t Resist a Great Bookstore
We visit a local New York City bookstore, dive into The Times’s new bookstore crawl series, and recommend some of our favorite books about bookstores and booksellers.
26 mins
21 August Finished
This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like (Encore)
We bring back an episode from our archives, in which Annie Jacobsen discusses her 2024 book “Nuclear War: A Scenario.”
45 mins
14 August Finished
Let’s Talk About the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century
explicitFrom “Gone Girl” to “Mystic River,” Gilbert Cruz, Tina Jordan and Sarah Lyall revisit the books that changed the genre, discuss overlooked favorites and recommend the thrillers that everyone should read next.
51 mins
5 August Finished
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’
Douglas Stuart’s latest novel follows a profoundly isolated father and son, each grappling with long-held secrets.
55 mins
1 August Finished
Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)
It’s time for our annual midyear check-in on the books that we can’t stop thinking about.
39 mins
24 July Finished
Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple
Host Gilbert Cruz's conversation from last year with author Sophie Elmhirst features "Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck" — the gripping 1970s story of a couple shipwrecked by a whale — newly out in paperback this summer.
31 mins
17 July Finished
