Authority: Essays

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Many worry that criticism is suffering from a crisis of authority. In a world where everyone’s a critic, what is criticism for? Since her canonical essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a leading public intellectual and a bold cartographer of the new landscape of taste itself.

Authority brings together sharp, illuminating essays on everything from musical theater to sci-fi nov...