In this week's issue, we spotlight Richard Powers's Playground, "a novel of spectacular thematic scope and surreal drama" in which a tiny French Polynesian island becomes the grand setting for the endeavors of a scientist, an artist, a billionaire, and a writer; and Question 7, an "astonishing and uncategorizable" memoir by Richard Flanagan, about the "chain of contingency" connecting his childhood in Tasmania, his father's wartime trauma, physicist Leo Szilard, and author H.G. Wells, among others. Plus, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote by Michael Eric Dyson and Marc Favreau is an "exceptionally well researched, compelling, and honest" history for teen readers about the voting process in the United States.
And in The Writer's Life, Rachel Weiss's Group Chat author Lauren Appelbaum describes how she channeled her fandom of Bridget Jones's Diary and Pride & Prejudice into the hilarious story of a carefree millennial discovering her direction in life with the much-needed help of her friends.