“Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?,” by the British critic and novelist who died in 2016, features essays originally published in The London Review of Books that showcase her keen wit, incisive observations and intimate voice.
Andrea Wang, Jason Chin, Travis Jonker, Grant Snider, Juana Martinez-Neal, Corinna Luyken and more depict our symbiotic relationship with the environment.
From “Useful Delusions,” by Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler, about why lying to ourselves can be good, to Adam Grant’s “Think Again,” about how we can reset our preconceived notions.
In decades past, the Book Review occasionally asked young authors about their biggest influences. For our 125th anniversary, we put the question to a new generation.
“I get superstitious. I once had a book sent to me that was disrupting my ability to write a novel because of a superficial similarity between the two. I took that book and dug a hole and buried it deep in the backyard.”
