Kaitlin Olson, after 17 seasons on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, scored a hit of her own last year with this procedural about a peppery single mom with a genius-level IQ who stumbles into a consulting job with the LAPD while serving as a precinct’s cleaning lady. The mysteries will get personal for Olson’s Morgan Gillory in Season 2, because in last fall’s season finale a serial killer took an interest in her and she also learned that her long-gone first husband is still alive. Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 10 p.m., ABC.

by David Baron

A little over a century ago, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world “had Martians on the brain,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. In 1906, The New York Times reported that evidence of life had been discovered on the red planet, and a year later, The Wall Street Journal asserted that the existence of intelligent human life on our planetary neighbor had been proven. “How this came to pass is the subject of The Martians,” David Baron’s “witty” and deeply researched new book about a cultural craze that had taken flight about 15 years earlier. It was an era when breakthroughs were common, the theory of evolution had changed how people understood their universe, and tabloid-style journalism fanned interest in barely justified scientific speculation. Fortunately, “Baron comes not to bury the Mars mania but to examine the reasons why we choose to believe what we believe,” and he “approaches his subject with clarity, style, and drive.”

“Striking details” enliven Baron’s account, said Dennis Drabelle in The Washington Post. The story’s central figure, wealthy Boston heir Percival Lowell, was 11 years ahead of the Journal in proclaiming the existence of intelligent life on Mars, and he poured his riches into proving his claim, going so far as to build an observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., that still stands today. Even when critics scoffed, “Lowell kept peering through his telescopes and seeing what he expected to see”: lines that appeared to be canals connecting oceans on Mars’ surface, suggesting that an advanced civilization had built a sophisticated transport network. Lowell spread his beliefs through well-received books and sold-out lectures, and the popular culture of the era became “awash” in fictional speculations about smart Martians, including in novels by H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

We all know that Lowell and his fellow believers were wrong about Mars, said Maren Longbella in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Still, “Baron skillfully builds tension around the house of cards Lowell creates,” and we read on to learn how many famous figures, including Nikola Tesla, jumped on the Martian bandwagon and how their delusions were finally toppled. Because Baron never ridicules the believers, The Martians proves to be “less a tale of mass delusion than a love story,” one in which many of our fellow earthlings became swept away in romantic visions of what life elsewhere in the universe might look like. Because Baron makes our forebears’ foibles charming and persuasively argues that they sowed the seeds of every dream of space travel that has followed, “prepare to be dazzled by the romance, too.”

The Italian designer who dressed Hollywood

Giorgio Armani added by subtracting. The “deconstructed” jackets that brought the Italian designer renown in the mid-1970s stripped out the stiff linings and shoulder padding then common to sport coats in favor of soft fabrics, muted tones, and a sleek design that came to define relaxed elegance. Having done his part to “soften the image of men,” as Armani put it, he then set about to “harden the image of women,” with assertive power suits that in the 1980s became ubiquitous among female executives. Silver-haired, blue-eyed, and suavely handsome, Armani was beloved in Hollywood, where his black-tie suits and evening gowns were such a red-carpet staple that Women’s Wear Daily dubbed the 1990 Oscars “the Armani Awards.” A canny businessman who maintained personal control of a vast global enterprise, Armani amassed an estimated $12 billion. “Life,” he once said, “is a movie. And my clothes are the costumes.” 

Born in northern Italy, Armani grew up during Benito Mussolini’s reign, and in World War II his family “often had little to eat,” said The Times (U.K.). His father was an accountant, his mother a homemaker who made her three children elegant clothes. “We looked rich,” Armani later said. Aiming to be a doctor, he studied medicine in Milan but left for a stint in the military. He then landed a job as a window dresser at a Milan department store. His styling talents drew notice from designer Nino Cerruti, who gave Armani a job designing menswear despite his lack of training. In 1975, he launched his own label, funded by the sale of his Volkswagen Beetle. Armani’s reworked jackets—“supple as a cardigan, light as a shirt”—quickly caught on in Europe, said Reuters. In 1980, he “won the hearts of the U.S. glittering class” when his clothes were featured in the film American Gigolo, which showed a shirtless Richard Gere scouring a closet full of Armani suits and ties. Two years later, he made the cover of Time under the headline “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style.” 

Over the years, “Armani grew the company into a lifestyle empire,” said The Washington Post, putting his name on jewelry, housewares, hotels, restaurants, perfumes, multiple spin-off clothing lines, and hundreds of stores. His fabulous wealth bought a 213-foot yacht and a stable of luxury homes. A reserved workaholic, he toiled into his 90s, maintaining a vision that balanced glamour and subtlety. “Elegance doesn’t mean being noticed,” he once said. “It means being remembered.”