Library Without Walls

Displaying articles for: December 2011

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LIVES

December 12, 2011

Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler

Edited and translated by LAIRD M. EASTON

Reviewed by Michael Dirda

A diplomat’s journals form a scintillating chronicle of the Belle Époque – and beyond.

About the Columnist

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World. He is the author of the memoir An Open Book and several collections of essays. His most recent book is Classics for Pleasure.

Daybook

May 23: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow died on this day in 1934, gunned down in a police ambush on a road in the north Louisiana woods. The Barrow Gang's crime spree was short and small time, but the young "celebrity bandits" were…

Previously in Daybook

In the Margin

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin.

Earlier Posts

The Long List

Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now

She Left Me the Gun

Emma Brockes' mother Paula escaped from South Africa with a smuggled pistol and a dark secret. A daughter unravels her family's covert past -- and a suspenseful legal drama -- in this hard-boiled memoir of survival.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Expand your memory, puzzle-solving skills, and sense of metaphysical wonder with philosopher Daniel C. Dennett's tasting menu of user-friendly neuroscience and poetic lingual pursuits.

When the Devil Drives

Thespian-turned-P.I. Jasmine Sharp searches for a missing actress and veteran detective Catherine MacLeod tries to solve the case of a murdered one. Their paths intertwine amid the Scottish theater community with uproarious and gory results.