Sure, “Catcher in the Rye” has its detractors. But the influence of its wised-up yet winningly innocent hero keeps it among the Great American Novels.

New York Times book critics Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss their recent article, “Love Jack Kerouac? Read These Great American…

Drawn from her previously unpublished reflections on sessions with a therapist, “Notes to John” is at once slightly sordid and utterly fascinating.

Edmund White seems to hold nothing back in his raunchy, stylish, intimate new memoir, “The Loves of My Life.”

In “Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words,” Michael Owen offers a sympathetic portrait of the lyricist, overshadowed in a life that had him tending the legacy of his younger sibling George.

Jennifer Szalai, Dwight Garner and Alexandra Jacobs look back at the books that “offered refuge from the wheels grinding in our heads.”

In “Giant Love,” the novelist’s great-niece chronicles the Texas saga’s divisive reception and the epic film adaptation that’s now better known than the book.

The first volume of her frank autobiography is a testament to resilience, chronicling a grim childhood and the brazen path to stardom, with and without Sonny.