Ms. Kakutani has reviewed books at The New York Times since 1983 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1998. The paper named Parul Sehgal one of its book critics.
The author of “The Sunshine Sisters” is drawn to books by their covers: “There is still nothing like browsing in a bookstore with all the time in the world, allowing myself to be drawn to whatever catches my eye.”
Books by former Dallas police chief David O. Brown and the law professor Paul Butler, and a collection edited by Angela J. Davis, call for transformation of the system.
Ayobami Adebayo’s “Stay With Me,” like great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, explores the pull between tradition and modernity in Nigeria.
Joshua Green talks about “Devil’s Bargain”; Laura Dassow Walls discusses her new biography of Thoreau; and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich on “The Fact of a Body.”