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The Italian painter took still-life to new extremes, making a tie or a bedsheet look like an alien landscape.

Marilyn Monroe was, at her core, a seeker, Rachel Syme writes. "She wanted more than she started out with: more love, more freedom of movement, more security, more respect, more forgiveness, more control."

In "The Hill," a daughter comes of age through visits to her imprisoned mother, inheriting the afterlife of a youthful radicalism that shattered her family.

Americans have long imagined that they set off a global age of revolt. Seen within the era's wider wars of empire, the story looks rather different.

Short reviews of recent releases.

America's birthday party.

Frederic Edwin Church sold a nation on its own mythology. That was his making--and his unmaking.

Kimberlé Crenshaw gave us the terms "intersectionality" and "critical race theory." Her new memoir shows that she isn't done fighting over what they mean.

The slim, tortilla-forward northern-Mexican burrito is getting its due, at spots including Vato, in Park Slope, and Los Burritos Juarez, in Fort Greene.

A college professor spent seven years decoding the inscription on the grave of the writer Jonathan Swift. He thinks he's finally cracked it.