Category

Books & Fiction

Our Picks for the Best Books of 2025

By Lee Polevoi
By now, most “Best Books of the Year” lists have already appeared, with many of the same titles recurring from one “best of” list to another. What follows here is a more idiosyncratic selection of best books published this year, celebrating three novels, a short story collection, and memoir all deserving of more notice.

Inside the Forgotten Space Program That Made Landing on the Moon Possible

By Thomas J. Walsh
The crucial and groundbreaking Gemini missions came after the swaggering heroics of the Mercury flights, immortalized in book and film by The Right Stuff and many other titles, and before the world-changing Apollo program, which of course landed the first men on the moon (and not insignificantly led to another legendary movie, Apollo 13).

A Gripping Story of War and Resilience in ‘A Walk Among Heroes’

By James McDevitt
America faded away into the distance. Her last speck of land reached out until our new home gave way to the open sea. I turned around and got a glimpse of distant luxury: a transatlantic liner turned troopship. I wondered what she looked like before the years of war had beaten her down.

A Fall From Heaven Into WWI Trenches in ‘Angel Down’

By Lee Polevoi
In 'Angel Down,' his new novel set in France and Belgium during the First World War, a band of infantry misfits led by Private First Class Cyril Bagger emerges from the trenches and encounters a blinding celestial presence ensnared in barbed wire. Somehow, this ill-fated group frees the angel from entanglement and spirits her back to Allied HQ .

A Post-Apocalyptic Search for an Elusive Poem in ‘What We Can Know’

By Lee Polevoi
On one of these archipelagoes, a literary scholar named Thomas Metcalf searches through historical archives for a copy of a legendary poem, composed by a 20th-century poet, Francis Blundy, honoring his wife, Vivien. For reasons never made entirely clear, the poem—a 15-sonnet sequence—becomes a wildly popular staple of early 21st-century culture.