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New & Noteworthy

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Jan. 2, 2018

New this week:

THE MAN WHO MADE THE MOVIES By Vanda Krefft. (Harper, $40.) Krefft has written the first major biography of William Fox, the movie mogul whose life story is the archetypical rags-to-riches tale — a boy who worked in a sweatshop on the Lower East Side eventually creates an entertainment empire. PHONE By Will Self. (Grove Press, $27.) The final novel in Self’s massive Umbrella Trilogy exploring technology and psychopathology, this book is set in London and Iraq and tells the story of two men, a psychiatrist losing his own mind and a mysterious MI-6 agent. MY TWENTIETH CENTURY EVENING AND OTHER SMALL BREAKTHROUGHS: THE NOBEL LECTURE By Kazuo Ishiguro. (Knopf, $16.95.) This is the lecture that the most recent Nobel laureate gave in Sweden in early December, looking at his own evolution as a writer and his thoughts on what a new generation of authors must do to keep literature relevant to our lives. IN DAYS TO COME By Avraham Burg. (Nation Books, $28.) The former speaker of Israel’s Knesset gives his own take on his country’s history and the quagmire it now finds itself in as Zionism and Jewish identity evolve to meet the new realities of the 21st century. TELL ME MORE By Kelly Corrigan. (Random House, $26.) Corrigan unpacks 12 essential phrases, from “I don’t know” to “I love you,” that, as she puts it, “turn the wheel of life.”

& Noteworthy

In which we ask colleagues at The Times what they’re reading now.

“The last time I read PERSONAL HISTORY by Katharine Graham was in 2015, after almost nine years of working for The Washington Post, her newspaper. What struck me most then, though, was her description of her young adulthood in the nation’s capital, and the ‘legions of young men in Washington who grouped together to live in houses.’ Katharine Meyer and Philip L. Graham met at a group-house party in D.C.! I had suffered through so many myself, and mostly what I got were in-person recitations of funny things people had said on Twitter. I’m reading her book for a third time now, after being predictably charmed by the new movie ‘The Post.’ It is remarkable to watch Meryl Streep, as Graham, decide to publish the Pentagon Papers, then read that decision rendered in Graham’s own words. By the time you reach that point in the book, she has talked candidly about pregnancy loss, personal friendships with several presidents, her husband’s suicide — and the way she made history in a job she was never really expected to have. Maybe that would have been too long a movie, but it’s worth treating yourself to the source material.”

— Rachel Dry, editor of Sunday Review