Reading in the Brain

What you're doing with your eyes and brain right now is a lot more interesting than you realize. Read more...

Devil's Dream

The author of All Souls Rising bases his latest novel on the Civil War career of one of the Confederacy's most controversial figures. Read more...

The War That Killed Achilles

Caroline Alexander journeys back to the mother of all battles. Read more...

Too Much Happiness: Stories

One of the defining creators of contemporary short fiction suggests she has new territories in sight. Read more...

Changing My Mind

A wide-ranging collection of essays on topics that range from the nature of British comedy to the orations of Barack Obama. Read more...

The Original of Laura

The wizard of fiction's unfinished novel is published, and the Vladimir Nabokov's magic cabinet is unlocked for our perusal. Read more...

Sentencing the Suspects

Former National Book Award judge Tom LeClair takes a close look at this year’s fiction finalists. Read more...

Invisible

Veronique de Turenne explores the novelist's ambitious Invisible. Read more...

American Original

The remarkable career of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. Read more...

The Lacuna

A adventures of a Zelig-like figure are the center of the new novel from the author of The Poisonwood Bible. Read more...

City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s

A brash, revealing, and sometimes dishy chronicle of a gay writer's life in a bygone Manhattan. Read more...

Under the Dome

A town's mysterious encapsulation yields a nightmarish turn toward the brutal. Read more...

D-Day

"As the ramp went down we were getting direct fire right into our craft," wrote a soldier in the 116th on the western part of Omaha. "My three squad leaders in front and others were hit. Some men climbed over the side. Two sailors got hit." Read more...

Lit

The new memoir from the author of The Liars' Club charts life as an addict, poet, and survivor. Read more...

Googled

Do we really need another book about Google? Read more...

Super Freakonomics

Ezra Klein measures a sequel’s unintended consequences. Read more...

Cowboys Full

How a deck of cards gave birth to a legendary pastime that has come to stand for part of the American character. Read more...

The Humbling

An actor prepares for his climactic appearance. Read more...

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's most famous creation mingles with his maker and her circle. Read more...

Traveling with Pomegranates

The author of The Secret Life of Bees and her daughter pen an unusual memoir of travel and self-discovery. Read more...

Box 21

A tale of human trafficking and revenge, seen through multiple perspectives. Read more...

Parallel Play

A childhood seen through the high-precision lens of Asperger's syndrome. Read more...

The Tyranny of E-Mail

The editor of Granta looks at messages from Morse to Microsoft Outlook -- and sees the rise of an implacable electronic tide threatens to overwhelm us. Read more...

War Dances

A new collection of longer and shorter works from the award-winning novelist and poet trades in heartfelt sorrow and wicked humor. Read more...

The Music Room

A boy's life in a famed Tudor castle -- haunted by spirits of the past, and the present. Read more...

An Artist in Treason

The youngest general in the Continental Army was also an inventive schemer who nearly engineered the breakup of the fledgling Union. Read more...

Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!

Ralph Nader's public-policy fantasia pits noble tycoons against mega-corporations in what the author calls a "practical utopia." Read more...

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography

A portrait of the auteur, through the lens of conversation. Read more...

Blame

A murderous accident is the departure for one woman’s surprising journey to something like redemption. Read more...

Infection by Volume

A reading list that may form a textual inoculation for viral anxiety. Read more...

November 23: On this day in 1644 John Milton published his pamphlet, Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England. Having just returned from a visit to the imprisoned Galileo, Milton’s famous…
What children's book character do Noam Chomsky, Newt Gingrich, and Hugh Hefner share an affection for? Readers of this blog will remember our asking that question…
Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Hurry Down Sunshine
The former “Freelance” columnist for the Times Literary Supplement tells the extraordinary story of the summer his teenage daughter descended into psychosis. "They stole my words," she tells her father, and in supplying his own to treat her -- and his own -- affliction, Greenberg has written a haunting book. Now in paperback. Read our review.
G. I. Bones
The latest installment in one of the most underrated detective series around has US military policemen Ernie Bascom and George Sueno looking into further criminal doings in the demilitarized zone on the South Korean border.
Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer’s lyrics set the highest standards in the American songbook. Collaborating with Hoagy Carmichael, Harry Warren, Harold Arlen, and Jerome Kern, among many others, he set unforgettable words to some of the most memorable melodies in popular music...