From a “brilliant, one-of-a-kind maestro” ( Booklist ), a vibrant tapestry of memoir, research, and criticism Again, today, if I must choose between love and memory, I choose memory. What would you risk to know yourself? Which stories are you willing to follow to the bitter end, revise, or, possibly, begin all over? In this collection of five interrelated essays, Lucy Ives explores identity, national fantasy, and history. She examines events and records from her own life―a childhood obsession with My Little Pony, papers and notebooks from college, an unwitting inculcation into the myth of romantic love, and the birth of her son―to excavate larger aspects of the past that have been suppressed or ignored. With bracing insight and extraordinary range, she weaves new stories about herself, her family, our country, and our culture. She connects postmodern irony to eighteenth-century cults, Cold War musicals to a great uncle’s suicide to the settlement of the American West, museum period rooms to the origins of her last name to the Assyrian genocide, and the sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem to the development of modern obstetrics. Here Ives retrieves shadowy sites of pain and fear and, with her boundless imagination, attentiveness, and wit, transforms them into narratives of repair and possibility.

Recommended on 1 episode:

Inside Trump’s ‘Royal Court’

It has been harder to get insight into the dynamics of President Trump’s White House this term compared with the first one, partly because there have been fewer leaks. But after the attack on Venezuela and the administration’s actions in Minneapolis, I’ve found myself wondering: How exactly is Trump making decisions? Who is he listening to? How does this White House work? Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer cover the Trump administration for The Atlantic and have written a series of big profiles on key figures in this administration. Parker previously won three Pulitzer Prizes for her reporting at The Washington Post.

Books recommended:

• 📕  The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries) by Donna Tartt
• 📘  Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• 📗  Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender
• 📙  An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays by Lucy Ives
• 📕  Palimpsest: A Memoir (Vintage International) by Gore Vidal
• 📘  Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce by Douglas Starr

Ashley Parker , Michael Scherer Feb. 20, 2026 6 books recommended

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