rcmnd

Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights” and “The Genius Myth.”

1 thing

The Genius FactoryBook David Plotz

recommended

So, I have brought The Genius Factory by David Plots, which is the story of one mad eugenicist millionaire who decides that the way to solve all of America's problem is to get lots of Nobel Prize winners to donate their sperm and give it to couples to make babies. Let me just shock you. Doesn't go well. A lot of the people turn out not to be Nobel Prize winners. A lot of the people involved in it are very odd indeed.

Answering The Ezra Klein Show's closing question, three books to recommend, in “The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-helen-lewis.html). Quoted from the episode's YouTube auto-captions.

2026-06-05·youtube.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.