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Colum McCann’s new novel, Twist, tracks a group at sea tasked with repairing the underwater cables through which we all communicate. Below, the National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin recommends six other ocean tales.

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway (1952)

I read this novel to my father when he was sick and lay dying in his hospital bed in Dublin. It was a profoundly cathartic experience for both of us. He understood perfectly the metaphors at hand: Sometimes he was the old man and sometimes it was me. I think the grand search at sea was gorgeously entwined with his journey to come. And we were both dreaming of lions. Buy it here.

‘Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus’ by Mary Shelley (1818)

This might, at first, seem to be a strange choice for a work that takes place at sea. But Shelley’s novel begins with a startling scene of a dogsled, driven by a gigantic figure, fleeing across the Arctic ice. The novel, which is perfect for our times, is a moving exploration of science and philosophy and of course the damage we inflict on ourselves in our quest for power. Buy it here.

‘Moby-Dick’ by Herman Melville (1851)

You can’t gather any collection of literary gems concerning the sea and not choose Moby-Dick, which is one of those books that makes its own world. It’s an exploration into the depths of human consciousness; we all eventually become Ishmael in the hope to survive. Buy it here.

‘The Shipping News’ by E. Annie Proulx (1993)

Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize–winner is a perfect exercise in language and story. Once you’ve read it, Quoyle, the main character, a jilted newspaper reporter, will never leave your mind. Buy it here.

‘Desert Solitaire’ by Edward Abbey (1968)

When there’s not a drop of water around, then we realize that the whole world is an ocean. Reading this book—which is set almost exclusively in the desert, where Abbey worked as an Arches National Park ranger—makes you realize that if the desert were a bank we would have saved it a long time ago. By extension, the ocean too. Buy it here.

‘A Goat’s Song’ by Dermot Healy (1994)

A masterpiece of Irish fiction, where the sea blows in on every word, A Goat’s Song is steeped in alcohol and regret, but it is also the most gorgeous elegy to love and loss in recent memory. Buy it here.

President Donald Trump has long portrayed himself as a steadfast friend and fierce protector of Jewish people the world over. Jewish Americans, however, have been mostly unconvinced, voting overwhelmingly for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, keeping with decades of precedent for liberal candidates. Nevertheless, just days into his second term, Trump signed an executive order to “combat antisemitism,” focusing largely on the campus-roiling protests against Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

Since then, the Trump administration has targeted several international students for deportation, ostensibly over their roles in the recent protests. At the same time, allegations of permitting antisemitism to flourish on campus have been the purported basis for the White House’s push to defund Ivy League schools like Columbia and Brown University. But as the White House touts its efforts, a growing number of Jewish Americans have begun speaking out about what they claim is the exploitation of their identities for the president’s personal agenda.

‘Uncomfortable’ spotlight

The Trump administration has been “using ‘antisemitism’ as a pretext to advance a radical agenda,” said Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic. That agenda has “nothing to do with Jews at all” and is one that “most American Jews do not support.” In the case of “detentions and deportations,” for instance, while a “handful of high-profile cases” purport to be predicated on the subject’s alleged antisemitic actions, “most of them do not.” In so much as there have been instances of actual antisemitism on campuses, Trump has not “surgically targeted these failings at America’s universities for rectification,” said Rosenberg. Instead, he has “exploited them to justify the institutions’ decimation.”

To the extent that Trump’s crackdowns have “so far targeted critics of Israel,” critics nevertheless contend that his administration’s actions “uncomfortably echo previous eras of bigoted nationalism that gave way to overt antisemitism,” said The New York Times. The result, whether intended or not, is a “spotlight on Jews that makes many uncomfortable.”

Some Jewish communal groups that have previously backed the Trump administration are beginning to speak out about their discomfort with the White House’s tactics claiming to help protect Jews. After initially lauding Trump for the detention of Columbia University student and Gaza war protester Mahmoud Khalil, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt made “something of a shift” recently by gently critiquing the White House in the days that followed, said Jewish Insider. Protecting Jewish students “shouldn’t require us to shred the norms that we use to protect other people,” said Greenblatt in an interview with the publication.

Trump may have “couched” his “aggressive moves” against universities like Columbia and Princeton as a “means of protecting Jewish students,” said the Forward. At the same time, however, he has shuttered the Department of Education, which is the governmental body with the “most responsibility for investigating antisemitism.”

‘Weaponizing’ real pain

There is a “disdain for the exploitation of real concerns about antisemitism” on campuses when it’s used to “fuel a broader crackdown on liberal education,” said Jewish Studies Professor Joel Swanson at Slate. Students see a “pretext of fighting antisemitism” being used to “destroy the foundations of the liberal arts education.” This, in turn, has a chilling effect on those wanting to speak out about “legitimate concerns about antisemitism on campus.”

Trump is “weaponizing the real pain American Jews face,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), and he is using that pain as a tool in his “desire to wield control over the truth-seeking academic institutions that stand as a bulwark against authoritarianism.” Search for a moment in history where Jews have “benefited from a mix of rampant nationalism and repression, said Matt Bai at The Washington Post, in a critique of Greenblatt’s previous support for the Trump administration published two days before the Jewish Insider interview. “You’ll be looking awhile.”

With the bloom of spring, quite a few already-beloved TV series are popping out of the soil with new seasons. April’s television releases include the second chapter in an apocalyptic series about a pandemic that changed the world; the final chapter in a dystopian Margaret Atwood adaptation that feels increasingly prescient; and the latest season of Nathan Fielder’s nutty experiment, in which he attempts to untangle the airline industry’s deadly patterns.

‘Dying for Sex’

Nikki Boyer’s podcast “Dying for Sex” followed the real-life exploits of her close friend, Molly Kochan, who reacted to a terminal cancer diagnosis with a renewed lust for life — and a supercharged libido. Michelle Williams stars in the TV adaptation as Molly, a woman locked in a sexless marriage with a husband who treats her ailing body with kid gloves. Jenny Slate plays pal Nikki, who “becomes a kind of sexual counselor and cheerleader for Molly, helping her dying friend enjoy the wonders of the human body before it’s too late,” said The New York Times. (April 4 on Hulu)

‘The Last of Us’

Almost two years after its bombshell first season, the TV adaptation of the popular video game “The Last of Us” returns. Season two finds Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Belly Ramsey) five years older than we last saw them, still navigating a country ravaged by the cordyceps pandemic. “The real narrative of this season is about consequences, and by extension, choices, which makes it far more inward-focused than the first,” said the Los Angeles Times. Emmy-nominated actor Kaitlyn Dever (“Unbelievable”) also joins the cast as Abby. (April 13 on Max)

‘The Rehearsal’

Certified weirdo Nathan Fielder is back for a second season of “The Rehearsal,” a reality show where the comedian grants people the chance to “rehearse” future moments of their own lives. Earlier this year, HBO dropped a teaser that promised fresh episodes would be centered on an “issue that affects us all.”

And boy, does it deliver: This time around Fielder is investigating America’s recent slate of plane crashes, as he “believes that role-playing exercises could improve air traffic control and help prevent calamities,” said Variety. “So, he builds a replica of an airport on a soundstage and recruits dozens of actors and real-life pilots to engage in his televised experiment.” (April 20 on Max)

‘Étoile’

The famed husband-and-wife team behind cozy series “Gilmore Girls” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — are trying their hand at yet another dance show (their short-lived series “Bunheads” was also about ballet). “Étoile” stars Luke Kirby and Charlotte Gainsbourg as the leaders of prestigious ballet companies, located, respectively, in New York and Paris. The show “generates comedy and drama from the very different theatrical cultures in Europe and America,” said the Times, and the supporting cast is “filled with professional dancers, so the ballet sequences should be realistic and dynamic — and not just something to fill the space between the creators’ usual fast-paced, witty banter.” (April 24 on Amazon Prime)

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is back for its sixth and final season. The first premiered in April 2017, mere months after President Donald Trump assumed office. Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, depicting America under an authoritarian regime where women are stripped of their rights, felt eerily prescient then. Eight years later, Trump is once again in office, and real women continue to lose their reproductive freedoms amid state-wide abortion bans and the fall of Roe v. Wade. But there is “good news for those who tuned out,” said The Washington Post. “As the show reaches its climactic conclusion, there’s a drop of hope — maybe even some inspiration — amid the darkness.” (April 8 on Hulu)

‘Gavin Newsom is the de facto president of the United States right now’

Joe Mathews at the San Francisco Chronicle

Gavin Newsom is the “chief executive of America’s richest and most populous state,” and in “this peculiar moment, that makes him the real president, by default,” says Joe Mathews. There’s a “guy living in the White House who some people call president. But real presidents swear an oath to execute the laws and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Newsom is “acting like the president, not a governor, because the country needs someone to act like a president.”

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‘When lawyers apply a law aimed at VHS rentals to the streaming world of today’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

In the 1980s, Congress “lost its collective mind over the idea that its members’ rental histories could undergo public scrutiny,” but now the “same law is being invoked to attack Weigel Broadcasting,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Americans “should be aware that practically every keystroke on every website could potentially be tracked.” But “most Americans are still surprised to learn how much of their personal information is being collected. And once it’s given away, there’s no getting it back.”

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‘The grace of Wayne Gretzky’

Spencer Neale at The American Conservative

Alex Ovechkin scored his “895th goal, a new record in the NHL,” and Wayne Gretzky “provided a fitting bridge from past to present,” says Spencer Neale. It’s “not easy to watch your greatest successes pass by, but Gretzky has done so with great honor and respect.” Gretzky’s “goal record has long stood as one of the most insurmountable achievements,” but “instead of dismay, Gretzky displayed humility, honor, and dignity as his lofty achievement was torn from the record books.”

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‘A Trump-Congo minerals deal may not be worth the risk’

Liam Karr at The Hill

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has “presented U.S. officials and the American people with a proposal: help bring security to the embattled central African country and, in return, receive access to valuable mineral deposits,” says Liam Karr. But “American leaders should ask if it is worth the risk it poses to U.S. service members.” The U.S. “should develop a comprehensive critical minerals strategy and seek out partnerships that best suit this strategy, not build a strategy around external offers.”

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The job market was much healthier than expected in March, but some economic analysts are worried that the cascading effect of President Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs could push hiring in the other direction. While the market added 228,000 jobs last month — far higher than the monthly average of 158,000 jobs over the past year — financial experts are expressing skepticism that this job boom is here to stay.

Others, though, say that while the economy could crater due to Trump’s tariffs on almost every country in the world, the job market itself may not bear the brunt. But this does not necessarily mean that labor wouldn’t feel economic malaise as a result.

‘The labor market is ill-positioned’

The job market has “proved surprisingly resilient,” even as the economy has been “buffeted by rapid inflation, high interest rates and political instability,” said Ben Casselman and Colby Smith at The New York Times. But Trump’s tariffs “could be enough to shatter what had arguably been the economy’s final source of support” in the job market.

Companies typically pass the extra cost of the tariffs onto the consumer, which will “raise prices for consumers and businesses, which will lead employers to pull back on hiring and, if the tariffs remain in place long enough, lay off workers,” said Casselman and Smith. If the “economy isn’t growing as fast, or it isn’t growing at all, you don’t need as many workers,” Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo, said to the Times.

This gives economists reason for caution about the market. The “saying, ‘past performance is no guarantee of future results,’ could apply to this jobs report,” said Stephanie Hughes at Marketplace. One area where this has come to the forefront is the auto industry. If the “price goes up a lot, because the production costs have gone up a lot, the demand for those cars is probably going to fall,” UBS chief U.S. economist Jonathan Pingle said to Marketplace. This “probably means less workers to produce those cars.”

The “labor market is ill-positioned to withstand new shocks from elevated uncertainty, increased tariff costs, cuts to government spending and employment, and weakening business and consumer sentiment,” Veronica Clark, an economist at Citigroup, said to Reuters. Beyond this, more “people faced long bouts of joblessness though the median duration of unemployment has eased, and multiple job holders continued to rise as did permanent job losers,” Lucia Mutikani said at Reuters.

‘Hiring has remained stable in some industries’

Not every sector is hit equally, as “hiring has remained stable in some industries, including health care and technology,” Debra Boggs, the founder and CEO of research firm D&S Executive Career Management, said to CNBC. Instead of being out of jobs, some of “her clients are senior-level federal leaders now pivoting to the private sector.” But it is “so incredibly uncertain and unprecedented. I have no idea,” Boggs said.

The “Trump administration has argued that while tariffs may drive up prices, they will also help fuel job creation stateside, particularly across manufacturing,” said Pavithra Mohan at Fast Company. And when “analyzing the impact of tariffs levied during Trump’s first term, some economists found that manufacturing employment remained more or less unchanged; in other industries like agriculture, however, tariffs catalyzed job losses.” However, Trump’s first-term tariffs were also not nearly as widespread as his current plan.

When it comes to Trump’s claim that his tariffs will boost manufacturing jobs, the “tariffs by themselves don’t guarantee that outcome but could be a component of a broader industrial strategy if policies favorable to workers are advanced as well, such as those supporting higher wages and limiting the adoption of job-replacing automation,” said Tobias Burns at The Hill. But there is “little evidence of a broader worker-protection agenda being advanced by the Trump administration so far.”