Book Review

Nonfiction

Disarming Iran: A Story of Cybersabotage and Sanctions

Jay Solomon’s “The Iran Wars” is an account of how the threat of a nuclear Iran grew, as did American efforts to curb it.

By SUZANNE MALONEY

Bookends

Can You Read a Book the Wrong Way?

Adam Kirsch and Anna Holmes debate whether some methods of reading are more correct than others.

Inside The New York Times Book Review Podcast

Inside The New York Times Book Review: Simon Schama’s ‘The Face of Britain’

Simon Schama talks about “The Face of Britain,” and Robert Gottlieb discusses “Avid Reader.”

Ivory Tower

The Truth Is Out There

The notion that life, including intelligent life, exists beyond Earth seems more persuasive than ever. Four new books take a look at the search, and the searchers.

By JAMES RYERSON

The Shortlist

Natural Disaster

New books about a powerful hurricane, disaster preparedness, water management and the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

By KIM TINGLEY

Nonfiction

Robert Gottlieb’s ‘Avid Reader’: A Publishing Giant’s Memoir

In “Avid Reader,” the editor Robert Gottlieb chronicles a lifelong affair with books.

By THOMAS MALLON

Fiction

In a New Novel, an Indian Woman Tracks Her Abuser

An orphan heads to a temple town to confront her history of abuse in Anuradha Roy’s Booker-longlisted novel “Sleeping on Jupiter.”

By MANIL SURI

Fiction

A Count Becomes a Waiter in a Novel of Soviet Supremacy

An aristocrat under house arrest witnesses the rise of the Soviet empire in Amor Towles’s “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

By CRAIG TAYLOR

Fiction

Schlock and Awe: A Novel Follows a Director’s Horrific Shoot

“We Eat Our Own,” Kea Wilson’s debut novel about a jungle film shoot, draws inspiration from the notorious “Cannibal Holocaust.”

By JONATHAN DEE

Fiction

Alexandra Kleeman Writes Like an Alien on an Anthropological Mission to Earth

Kleeman’s stories in “Intimations” span styles and moods.

By HERMIONE HOBY