There's a new Doctor in the house. More than 60 years after Doctor Who began its enduring run as a British TV institution, the sci-fi adventure series has moved to Disney and installed a 15th incarnation of the time traveler who leads the show. Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education steps into the role, keeping the franchise's British accent intact as his Doctor journeys from prehistoric times through Regency England and into apocalyptic futures to save our corner of space from being swallowed by the universe. Nineteen-year-old Millie Gibson co-stars. Friday, May 10, Disney+.

by Erik Larson

Major turns in the course of history "do sometimes depend on the decisions of a single person," said Adam Goodheart in The Washington Post. America's Civil War was undoubtedly fought over slavery, as author Erik Larson makes clear in his compelling new account of the five months leading up to the first shots fired in a conflict that eventually claimed 750,000 lives. There are hazards to Larson's approach. By focusing on white decision-makers in Charleston, S.C., and Washington, D.C., whose choices precipitated the secessionists' April 12, 1861, attack on Fort Sumter, the best-selling author of The Devil in the White City renders the land's other 30 million inhabitants "a vague offstage presence." Still, few historians have done a better job of dramatizing how the leap from national crisis to war hinged on a handful of decisions.

"Readers familiar with this era of American history meet the usual cast of characters," said Mitchell G. Klingenberg in National Review. Abraham Lincoln's ineffectual predecessor, James Buchanan, had done almost nothing when seven Southern states seceded after Lincoln's 1860 election and began seizing federal property. Maj. Robert Anderson, a Kentucky-born U.S. Army officer, had bravely defended Fort Sumter as secessionist forces amassed artillery to bombard the federal stronghold at the heart of Charleston's harbor. The Demon of Unrest also draws from the familiar diaries of South Carolina socialite Mary Boykin Chesnut and highlights the pot-stirring radicalism of fiercely pro-slavery Virginia activist Edmund Ruffin. But Larson has made the story his own, and his "riveting" account reaffirms his status as "one of the great historical-nonfiction writers of our time." 

Though Larson mentions election deniers' Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol only in a preface, said Phil Kloer in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "the rhyme of history pervades this timely volume." The book's title comes from an 1860s letter warning about the anger spreading across a wide swath of the country as the South's landed white gentry were watching their way of life vanish. And as the threat of open conflict grows, Larson makes sure we once again hear Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature." Most of this material has been "tilled and re-tilled" by other historians. But Larson, who's a writer first, brings "a welcome novelist's sensibility" to the story, generating a narrative momentum that "starts at a brisk canter on Election Day in 1860 and moves to a full gallop as North and South clash over our common future."

The political operative who battled feminism

Beverly LaHaye's life changed when she turned on the TV in 1978 and saw Betty Friedan holding forth on women's liberation — but she wasn't inspired, she was aghast. A self-described "fearful, introverted" homemaker married to the pastor of an evangelical megachurch, LaHaye was instantly convinced that somebody had to stand up and speak for "normal and traditional women." More than 1,200 women showed up to her first meeting, planting the seed that would grow into the lobbying group Concerned Women for America. At its height, CWA had half a million members and wielded such influence that President Ronald Reagan addressed its national convention in 1987, calling LaHaye one of America's political "powerhouses." Over a decades-long career, she vehemently fought feminism, gay rights, and abortion, while advocating for school prayer and the teaching of creationism. LaHaye had pink business cards and a soft, cheerful countenance, but underneath was a steely core. "God," she said, "didn't make me to be a nobody." 

She was born Beverly Jean Davenport in Detroit, where her mother, widowed when Beverly was 2, married a tool-and-die maker at Ford. After high school, Beverly attended evangelical Bob Jones University, said Christianity Today, but once she met aspiring pastor Tim LaHaye there, she "left school to support her husband in ministry." Being a housewife didn't come naturally: She said she harbored "smoldering resentment" until she recast her role as spiritual service, believing that submission was "God's design for woman." Forcing herself to overcome her shyness, she "started teaching others what she had learned." CWA scored its "first victory" by helping to kill the Equal Rights Amendment, said The Times (U.K.). The measure, which would have barred discrimination on the basis of sex, failed to win ratification by enough states by the 1982 deadline, in part because of lobbying by CWA members. 

Over the next decade, "LaHaye and CWA only grew more effective," said The Washington Post. She moved its headquarters to Washington, where she hosted a radio show, testified before congressional committees, and oversaw a staff of more than two dozen. She stepped down as president in 2006 but remained a board member until 2020. Her life of activism, she said in 2009, was not her own doing. "I think God just pushed me up out of my chair."