Quiet

A new book sheds fresh light on the much-maligned "introvert".

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The 12 Days of Drawn to Read

Ward Sutton doles out a dozen cartoon takes on the year in reading.

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That Used to Be Us

A call to action that challenges readers to reverse the decline of America.

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We Others: New and Selected Stories

A collection of short stories that light on the mysterious, the beautiful, and the disturbing.

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The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

The chilling true story of an extremely self-made man.

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2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

Legendary comedian, actor and filmmaker Albert Brooks pens a  satire-flecked vision of tomorrow's America.

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The Uncoupling

When a New Jersey high school puts on a classic Greek drama, a spell descends over the lives (and beds) of local residents.

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Everyone Loves You When You're Dead

A legendary interviewer retrieves an array of astonishing moments from over 3,000 conversations with the famous and infamous.

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The Nit Pickers

The correspondence of poet Elizabeth Bishop with the famously detail-oriented magazine that championed her.

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Disaster Preparedness

A wry memoir of childhood in the pop-culture saturated 1970s and 1980s, from a widely-admired cultural critic.

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Postcards from a Year in Reading

Ward Sutton sends back souvenirs from a journey through the most notable books of 2010.

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Autobiography of Mark Twain

An illustrated look at the unconventional memoir of an American legend, published, as he stipulated, 100 years after his death.

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Boozehound

From the proper way to handle Aquavit to a bar's worth of variations on the Manhattan, Ward Sutton follows this charming odyssey in a cocktail glass.

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Big Girls Don't Cry

Ward Sutton's visual review of Rebecca Traister's mashup of memoir and political history.

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Common as Air

An illustrated review of Lewis Hyde's new treatise about creativity in the public sphere.

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So Cold the River

Ward Sutton's illustrated review of Michael Koryta's new thriller about an old hotel, a long-dead local tyrant, and one strange bottle of water.

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Ilustrado

Ward Sutton's illustrated review of Miguel Syuco's dazzling new tale of an author's mysterious death.

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Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Ward Sutton's illustrated review of Daniel Okrent's new history of America's singular experiment in mass sobriety.

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Beatrice and Virgil

Ward Sutton on Yann Martel's intriguing follow-up to Life of Pi, in which a writer wrestles with a seemingly impossible subject.

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Love in Mid Air

A debut novel follows a married woman's affair with a man she meets while traveling -- and raises questions about love, sex, and commitment in an age of missed connections.

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Father Knows Books: Princess Hyacinth

"Father Knows Books" returns to cast a cartoonist's (and parent's) eye over a new book for children, about a royal family and an uplifting scenario.

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Americans in Paris

Ward Sutton reviews Charles Glass's new history of how American citizens survived, resisted, collaborated, and sometimes died during the Nazi occupation of the French capital.

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The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

Ward Sutton looks at a new annotated and illustrated edition of the letters from one of the most famously tormented personalities in the history of painting.

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Father Knows Books: Otis

In a new visual review feature from Ward Sutton, the cartoonist (and parent) looks at Loren Long's new book Otis. Read more...

Last Night in Twisted River

In the latest novel from John Irving, a father and son are on the run from a Javert-like pursuer.

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The Wild Things

Dave Eggers makes a novel out of Maurice Sendak's classic picture story. An illustrated review by Ward Sutton.

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Behind the Laughs

Ward Sutton's Illustrated review of I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era

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Inherent Vice

Ward Sutton's illustrated review of Pynchon's trip into detective fiction.

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Life, Inc.

In an illustrated review, Ward Sutton ponders the brand-bound destiny depicted in Douglas Rushkoff's Life, Inc.

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The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards

Ward Sutton's cartoon review finds the groove in Robert Boswell's The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards.

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About the Columnist
Ward Sutton’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in the Village Voice, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Time, Esquire, The New Yorker, and on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.

Ward's Drawn to Read appears monthly in the Barnes & Noble Review. Click here to see the complete Drawn to Read archive.

February 9: Alice Walker was born on this day in 1944. Thirty years after her Pulitzer winner The Color Purple, Walker continues to publish in many genres. Her most recent book is The Chicken Chronicles, a memoir-meditation…

Once held close to the chest and protected by well-understood laws, the valuable information about our lives that we blithely disclose with our every keystroke has the potential…

Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Alice James

"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.

Midnight in Austenland

The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks...

Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.