The Book Review

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, giving Americans a chance to reflect on the nation’s past and imagine its future.

Who better to help us make sense of this moment than Jill Lepore? The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and author of “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” joined the “Book Review” podcast to recommend some reading for the occasion. She also revisits the politics and drama of America’s previous birthdays, and discusses how a dystopian novel may be the most relevant read about the country right now.

After that, Elisabeth Egan, an editor at The Book Review, lays out some of the summer’s most anticipated beach reads.

Books Discussed on This Episode:

“We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution,” by Jill Lepore

“The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” by Jill Lepore (forthcoming)

“American Scripture,” by Pauline Maier

“Bicentennial,” by Mark Stein

“Gliff,” by Ali Smith

“Yesteryear,” by Caro Claire Burke

“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” by Belle Burden

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“The Things We Never Say,” by Elizabeth Strout

“Man Overboard!,” by Kathleen Rooney

“American Fantasy,” by Emma Straub

“A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck”: Sophie Elmhirst

“The Shampoo Effect,” by Jenny Jackson

The “Nantucket” book series, by Elin Hilderbrand

“Cool Machine,” by Colson Whitehead

“London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth,” by Patrick Radden Keefe

“How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University,” by Theo Baker

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“Yesteryear,” Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel, tells the story of Natalie Heller Mills: an ultrasuccessful tradwife influencer who posts about her life on Yesteryear Ranch, a homestead where she grows her own food, tends to cows and chickens, raises her six children and models a particular brand of conservative Christian womanhood. But not all is as it seems. Behind the cameras, nannies care for the children, Natalie shops for the types of groceries she decries online, she detests her husband with his manosphere beliefs, and she’s on the cusp of being exposed by a rogue video producer.

One day she wakes up and discovers she has been transported to 1855, forced to live the pioneer persona she has been performing online. How did she get there? How can she escape? And what does her misery mean about the lifestyle she has embraced for profit?

"Yesteryear" was met with fanfare after it was published in April. Even before the book was released, it was scooped up for a film adaptation that Anne Hathaway is set to star in and produce. The novel was selected as a “Good Morning America” Book Club pick; Burke appeared on “Late Night With Seth Meyers”; and the book has spent more than a month on The Times’s best-seller list.

Everyone, it seems, is talking about “Yesteryear.” But does it live up to the hype? On this episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Jennifer Harlan and Joumana Khatib.

Other books mentioned in this episode:

• “Running Out of Time,” by Margaret Peterson Haddix


• “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn


• “The Power,” by Naomi Alderman


• “Eileen,” by Ottessa Moshfegh


• “The Compound,” by Aisling Rawle


• “Hot Girls With Balls,” by Benedict Nguyen


• “Just Watch Me,” by Lior Torenberg


• “A Good Person,” by Kirsten King


• “The Guest,” by Emma Cline

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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In April 1989, a newspaper clipping about an art exhibit landed in the mailbox of the Rev. Donald Wildmon, the founder of a conservative evangelical group, the American Family Association.

Partly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibit included a now-infamous photograph by Andres Serrano that showed a crucifix submerged in Serrano’s own urine. Incensed, Wildmon sent a copy of the photo to every member of Congress, setting off a battle led by the Christian right over what contemporary art could be and who should receive federal funding for it.

Isaac Butler, an author and cultural historian, walks through this and other pivotal moments in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s in his new book, “The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars.”

Butler spoke to the Book Review’s editor, Gilbert Cruz, about how these fights unfolded and what they meant for the artists themselves. He sat down to write the book, he said, when “it really felt like the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s that I grew up in were repeating again.”

Books and plays discussed on this episode:

“The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars,” by Isaac Butler

“Measure for Measure,” by William Shakespeare

“Transgressions: The Offences of Art,” by Anthony Julius

“It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic,” by Jack Lowery

“The Devil Finds Work,” by James Baldwin

“Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz,” by Cynthia Carr

“Elia Kazan: A Life,” by Elia Kazan

“Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War and the Fight to End Slavery,” by Richard Kreitner

“The Kindness of Strangers,” by Salka Viertel

“The Talmud: A Biography,” by Barry Scott Wimpfheimer

“My Last Sigh,” by Luis Buñuel

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In 2024, The New York Times Book Review gathered more than 500 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets and literary enthusiasts to help pick the best books of the 21st century so far. One of those books was Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Road,” which came in at No. 13. That book tells the story of a man and his young son trying to survive in a postapocalyptic United States. Like other books by McCarthy, it combines ornate prose with moments of unforgettable violence. It is also a moving story of love and parenthood under the most extreme circumstances.

One of the people who voted on our best books list was Ryan Holiday, author of more than a dozen nonfiction books, host of the “Daily Stoic” podcast and owner of the Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas. We recently invited him on the “Book Review” podcast to talk about “The Road,” and how its meaning changed for him after he became a father.

Books Discussed on This Episode:

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

“No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy

“All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy

“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy

“The Odyssey” by Homer

“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The Children of Men” by P. D. James

“The Plague” by Albert Camus

“Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates

“Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius

“Of Boys and Men” by Richard Reeves

“Outdoor Kids in an Inside World” by Steven Rinella

“Letter to His Father” by Franz Kafka

“Range” by David Epstein

“Good Inside” by Becky Kennedy

“Wild Dark Shore” by Charlotte McConaghy

“Death Be Not Proud” by John Gunther

“The Revenant” by Michael Punke

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June is here and the long summer days are stretching out ahead, which means it’s time to settle in front of the air-conditioner with a pile of books. (Just us?) But which ones should you read this summer? The “Book Review” podcast’s Gilbert Cruz talks with the Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the titles they’re most excited about.

Books discussed in this episode:

“Red Sheet,” by James Ellroy

“Villa Coco,” by Andrew Sean Greer

“They All Fall in Love at the End,” by Haili Blassingame

“Whistler,” by Ann Patchett

“As If,” by Isabel Waidner

“The Housewives Underground,” by Kaitlyn Tiffany

“Nebraska,” by Monica Datta

“Cool Machine,” by Colson Whitehead

“The Mortons,” by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld

“Country People,” by Daniel Mason

“Fixer Chao,” by Han Ong

“Biological War,” by Annie Jacobsen

“We Were Forbidden,” by Jacqueline Harpman

“The Amateur,” by Chris Bohjalian

“A Tender Age,” by Chang-rae Lee

“The Jackal,” by Joby Warrick

“A Moment in the Sun,” by Shane White

“A Sudden Flicker of Light,” by David Thomson

“Rabbit, Fox, Tar” by P.C. Verrone

“The Au Pair,” by Teddy Wayne

“Land,” by Maggie O’Farrell

“Sublimation,” by Isabel J. Kim

“Cloudthief,” by Nathaniel Rich

“Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep,” by Paul Tremblay

“You Won’t Get Free of It,” by Rachel Aviv

“Awake Awake,” by Fiona Mozley

“Triage,” by Claudia Rankine

“Catch the Devil,” by Pamela Colloff

“Helpless,” by Jessica Knoll

“Life of M,” by Rachel Cusk

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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