Selected by Veronica Buckley, the author of “Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe’s First Family.” ...

Debunking alien claims matters, but so does telling richer, more compelling stories about how humans shaped their own past.

Afrofuturist music transcends beyond space, connecting the past, present, and future, via artists such as Sun Ra, Flying Lotus, Drexciya, and Alice Coltrane.