Mark I. Pinsky

When police and prosecutors settle on a theory of a crime, especially a capital murder case, they often default to adversarial mode: They will hear nothing that contradicts or undermines their conc

“a fighting novel, and one with a great heart.”

Few nonfiction books age well, especially those about race in America—the works of W. E. B. Dubois and John Hope Franklin being the most conspicuous exceptions.

“Bordewich’s book should serve as a cautionary tale to keep us alert to the modern incarnation of the KKK, which has traded its bed sheets and hoods for coats and ties.”

“Reporter solves murder” is a reliable trope for movies, mysteries, and television. But trust me: It’s tougher than it looks on the screen or the page. In real life it rarely happens.

World War II was a deeply challenging time for pacifists and conscientious objectors, most of whom came to their beliefs in the wake of the horrendous casualties of World War I, which was in retros

Truman Capote’s groundbreaking, nonfiction classic, In Cold Blood—a gripping account of the 1959 slaughter of a wealthy Kansas farm family— instantly established the writer’s brilliant lit

Veteran reporter Stephen Bates, who once covered both the English royals and religion for the Guardian, has since leaving the newspaper carved out an engaging and enterta

For a century and a half, Confederate statesman and former US Senator Judah P. Benjamin was a source of pride to parochial Southern Jews who longed for regional legitimacy and validation.

Keeping straight the Herods of biblical history—monstrous but monumental leaders around the time of Jesus, as well as their offspring who sometimes used the same name—is no easy feat.

“an incredibly valuable, insightful, and instructive book . . .

For a growing number of COVID quarantiners, beset with cabin fever, the western North Carolina city of Asheville has become a relatively safe, getaway refuge, worth the cheap flight—or the longer d

For more than 50 years, Rabbi Arthur Waskow has been a spiritual and intellectual force of nature. If the Jewish tradition included whirling dervishes, Waskow would be one of them.

“‘If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.’ At least 15,000 demonstrators tried, with mixed results at best, to bring Washington to a virtual standstill.”

For novelists, filmmakers, and writers of popular history, Shanghai in the years between the two world wars is irresistible.

Who is best suited to understand and explain the cynical marriage of convenience between Donald Trump and America’s white evangelicals—a critical outsider, or a sympathetic insider?

“a gripping psychological thriller that delivers on its examination of the corrosive impact of family secrets with a dramatic finish that upends expectations.”

In 2016, Duke University Divinity School Professor Kate Bowler burst onto the media scene with a New York Times op-ed column called “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me.”

Emily Nussbaum is insightful and engaging in this collection of essays, mostly from the New Yorker, for which she is the longtime television critic. Clearly, readers are in the hands of an

Many readers in this quadrant of the globe have discovered Australian crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, police procedurals—through television series created for broadcast and streaming services.

"gripping . . ."

For sheer noirish decadence, few cities around the globe have rivaled Shanghai between the two world wars and for a short time after.

“I got the Simpsons job the same way I got a wife,” writes Mike Reiss. “I was not the first choice, but I was available.”