About halfway through reading Benjamín Labatut’s breakout novel, “When We Cease to Understand the World,” I texted a friend ...

The contemporary poet Jello Biafra said, “I think there’s plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor.” It depends on the humor, of course.

For many others, movie comparisons including The Godfather and There Will Be Blood were top of the mind – as well as Christopher Nolan’s intellectual blockbuster Oppenheimer, which won best ...