This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
In Toni Morrison’s Sula, the title character and Nel are friends and enemies all at once: Nel envies and eventually hates Sula but, at the end of the novel, finds herself entirely bereft without her. In Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, Lila and Elena are united by their similarities in an unforgiving world, until their differences send them hurtling away from each other.

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Throughout Donald Trump’s first term, his third campaign, and the first 10 months of his second term in office, he and his allies warned darkly of a “deep state” seeking to thwart his every move.

Zohran Mamdani is an extraordinary political story: a generational political talent, an out-of-nowhere success, and—measured by the number of citizens he will soon govern—the most powerful elected democratic socialist in American history.
But his allies have tried to turn his victory into something different: a model for the national Democratic Party.

In the hours before Democrats’ electoral victories Tuesday night, the end of the government shutdown seemed near. Several Democratic senators had spent the day quietly discussing a potential bipartisan settlement. Republican leaders had expressed confidence that once the “radical left” activists had their say at the polls, moderate lawmakers would have enough political cover to cave and reopen the government.

Donald Trump was giddy. In the Oval Office today, the president announced that he had secured a deal to dramatically slash the price of obesity drugs. Soon, Wegovy and Zepbound will be sold on a new website—dubbed TrumpRx—for only about $250 a month, a fraction of their current retail price of more than $1,000. “Did I do a good job?” Trump asked the assembled reporters. “Do you think Biden could have done this? I don’t think so.

Back when he was a House member from Wyoming, Dick Cheney was part of a congressional delegation that visited the Soviet Union in the 1980s. During a lull in the schedule, Cheney and his colleagues were sitting around trying to entertain themselves when one of their wives decided to administer personality tests. The results included professions for which the members would be well suited.
Cheney’s ideal job? A funeral director.

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Barack Obama and Donald Trump have this in common: Both owe their political ascents in part to blunt attacks on leaders who sent America to war.

The film Die My Love takes place mostly in a remote farmhouse. Tucked away amid tall grasses and verdant woods in rural Montana, it seems idyllic. But Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence) appears uncomfortable as soon as she sets foot inside her new home. She flops over like a rag doll while her boyfriend, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), explores the building, which he inherited from his uncle. Months later, she and Jackson have a baby.