The Century-Old Book With a Message for This Season

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.

“We live in an age of human self-contempt,” George Packer wrote this week. In an essay about Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain, Packer tells readers that he believes the classic work of literary modernism saved his life during a dark time in his early 20s. It might also have something to teach us today. These days, Packer writes, people think very little of their neighbors...