In two new books, the historians Adrian Goldsworthy and Tom Holland portray an empire that knew how to hold back from a fight and make room for upstarts.
In C Pam Zhang’s “Land of Milk and Honey,” a chef finds herself in an elite community for the superrich in the Italian Alps, one of the last places on Earth where crops still grow.
Two years into a surge in book banning efforts across the country, restrictions that were largely happening in school libraries, where they affected children, are now affecting the wider community as well.
“I often look back on a book I thought was wonderful and inspiring and found it to be maudlin and flowery or have some other defect of character I overlooked,” says the journalist, whose new book is the novel “Mr. Texas.” “It could be that literary fashions have changed or I’ve gotten older, and of course both are true.”