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Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92

A Kentucky farmer, he railed against agribusiness and championed small family farms and the environment, winning widespread acclaim.

© Steve Hebert for The New York Times

Author Wendell Berry in 2012. The historian Page Smith hailed him as “a prophetic American voice of our day.”
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He Warned That the End of History Could Be Rough. Maybe Now People Will Listen.

Francis Fukuyama’s famous take on the post-Cold War world was widely misunderstood. In a new memoir, he tries to set the record straight.

© Cayce Clifford for The New York Times

Francis Fukuyama sees the current plight of liberal democracy not as a rebuke to his earlier work but as a vindication.
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How Marlon James Confronted ‘the Story I Was Not Allowed to Live’

With “The Disappearers,” the Booker Prize-winning author has written his most personal novel yet.

© Marcus Maddox for The New York Times

“I don’t go to novels to be safe,” Marlon James said. “I go to novels to be titillated, to be scared, to be educated, to be frightened — honestly, to be appalled.”
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Roy Cohn, Robert Mapplethorpe and a Trump-Era Dilemma Over Free Speech

When a respected biographer tried to use a Mapplethorpe photograph of Roy Cohn for a book cover, worries about the wrath of Mr. Cohn’s protégé, President Trump, intervened.

© Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Roy Cohn, from 1981.
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As a Storyteller, Tim Curry Had the Gift

He was a blast to watch, whether playing a mad scientist in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a butler in “Clue” or a singing King Arthur in “Spamalot.”
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Dolly Parton’s Other Legacy: A Fortune Given Away, Dollar by Dollar

The country star supported early childhood literacy, disaster relief, the development of the Covid-19 vaccine and more.

© Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Dolly Parton spoke at the Library of Congress during a 2018 celebration of her organization, the Imagination Library, and its 100 millionth book donation.
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