MUSIC
NONFICTION
GRIN & TONIC
THE THINKING READ
A.C. Grayling looks at the revelatory journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
POETRY
Nobel laureate Derek Walcott's rage and resignation in the face of mortality. Reviewed by Adam Kirsch.
March 19: Bob Dylan's first album was released forty-eight years ago today. One of two original compositions on Bob Dylan is "Song to Woody," a tribute to Woody Guthrie and the musical-political tradition in which the twenty-year-old Dylan…
When we posted the winners of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, we neglected to mention that Eulsa Bliss's Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays was praised…
Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
The Poisoner’s Handbook
How forensic science came of age in Jazz Age New York. Praising Blum's "extraordinary narrative alchemy", our columnist Sarah Weinman calls it "an unexpected yet appropriate open-sesame into a world that was planting seeds for the world -- with lethal toxins and cutting-edge tools -- that would later, darkly bloom."
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel
A welcome new translation of an ingeniously constructed fiction by a neglected Latin American master. The work of the Argentinian Fernandez (1874-1952), seen as an influence of Jorge Luis Borges, is held in the highest esteem in his native land.
For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus
The acclaimed cultural history illuminates a turbulent and telling period in French history.