Joker has garnered plenty of glory in recent years, but this Penguin just might outclass him. Colin Farrell, donning the same guise that made him unrecognizable in 2022’s The Batman, is not the gentleman thief you may have encountered in comic books. He’s a ruthless gangster who resents his nickname and is determined to seize rule of Gotham City’s crime world after a catastrophic seawall collapse. The formidable foes standing in his way include Sofia Falcone (played by Cristin Milioti) and crime boss Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown). Thursday, Sept. 19, at 9 p.m., HBO/Max.

by Yuval Noah Harari

“Yuval Noah Harari writes well at the scale of the species,” said Daniel Immerwahr in The Atlantic. Since the publication of his unlikely 2011 blockbuster, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the Israeli historian has displayed a zeal for big ideas and a “taste for provocative simplifications.” In Nexus, his “grimmest work yet,” Harari offers his take on how information technologies, from storytelling to mass media and beyond, have shaped human experience across several millennia. Bucking convention, “Harari rejects the notion that more information leads automatically to truth or wisdom,” arguing that new technologies have often spread misinformation, as the printing press did fears about witchcraft. Human access to larger stores of information has also led to artificial intelligence, “whose advent Harari describes apocalyptically.”

“As in his previous works, Harari’s writing is confident, wide-ranging, and spiced with humor,” said The Economist. “He draws upon history, religion, epidemiology, mythology, literature, evolutionary biology, and his own family biography, often leaping across millennia and back again within a few paragraphs. Some readers will find this invigorating; others may experience whiplash.” But his “strikingly original” take on information history, rooted in his belief that information is fundamentally a way of linking people and ideas, whether those ideas are wrong or right, also happens to arrive a moment when questions of truth and disinformation are “top of mind for voters—and readers.” The massive scale also suits the subject: Just as decisions made in the 4th century AD about what to include in the Bible had far-reaching and lasting consequences, Harari worries that humanity’s future will be shaped by decisions made today about AI. 

“Reading Nexus is a strange experience,” said Michael Marshall in New Scientist. “The quality of the text lurches up and down: One minute you are reading something incisive, the next you are wading through banalities.” Harari “lucidly” explains how the Bible and other holy books were curated by institutions with their own agendas, and engagingly contrasts how information flows in democratic societies and dictatorships. But Nexus contains “many silly bits,” and the fears he expresses about AI in the book’s second half add nothing new to the conversation. Is this the best we can expect from a man described as one of the 21st century’s most influential public intellectuals? “It isn’t that there is nothing good in Nexus, but readers shouldn’t have to pick through a sludge of sloppy thinking for rare nuggets of insight.”

The musician who gave America bossa nova

Sergio Mendes turned the rhythms pulsing through Rio de Janeiro clubs into a swinging international sensation. As a touring musician he played at the 1962 Carnegie Hall concert that first brought bossa nova—the Brazilian genre melding samba with jazz—to America. He soon moved to the U.S. for good, landing more hits there than any other Brazilian artist. With his group Brasil ’66, he produced lush bossa nova covers of English-language pop standards, including the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” and Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love.” But his most enduring song was in his native Portuguese: Jorge Ben Jor’s “Mas Que Nada,” which he turned into a soaring 1966 party anthem. “People didn’t know what it meant, and it didn’t matter,” Mendes said. “It just made people feel good.” 

Born in Niterói, Brazil, Mendes was a sickly child, “too frail for outdoor sports,” said The Telegraph (U.K.), so his mother taught him piano. After falling in love with jazz, the teenager was soon taking ferries to Rio to play in clubs, and by age 21 he performed at that pivotal Carnegie Hall show. When Brazil fell to military dictatorship two years later, he returned to the U.S., just as Astrud Gilberto’s “The Girl From Ipanema” was making a splash. With two young female singers he’d recruited, he signed with a record label co-owned by trumpeter Herb Alpert and released Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66. “Suddenly, Mendes was an international star,” said The Washington Post, with a sound that “evoked the ’60s of chic outfits and cocktail parties.” As the culture changed, Mendes’ sound evolved. His 1983 album Sergio Mendes contained the ballad “Never Gonna Let You Go,” a cover of the Dionne Warwick song that was his highest charting hit until the 2006 hip-hop version of “Mas Que Nada” with the Black Eyed Peas. 

Increasingly dismissed as “a relic who had made ‘elevator music,’” said The New York Times, Mendes “returned triumphantly” with the thumping, Grammy-winning 1992 album Brasileiro, for which he teamed up with Bahia-born songwriter Carlinhos Brown. Later he would collaborate with rapper Will.i.am for his 2006 album Timeless, while his last album, 2020’s In the Key of Joy, included a track with the rapper Common. “Working with different people from different countries,” he said, “just helps you grow.”