Reviews & Essays

Displaying articles for: January 2009

January 30, 2009

The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising

By KENNETH ROMAN
Reviewed by Barbara Spindel

The life of the original Mad Man. Read more...

January 29, 2009

The First Person and Other Stories

By ALI SMITH
Reviewed by Andrea Walker

A collection of short fiction that explores the unsettling consequences of the tales we tell ourselves. Read more...

January 28, 2009

Somewhere Towards the End

By DIANA ATHILL
Reviewed by Anna Mundow

A writer's painstaking account of her recent life, under the shadow of its end. Read more...

January 27, 2009

Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC 1874-1908

By WILLIAM ODDIE
Reviewed by James Parker

A new biography of the unique essayist, fabulist, and spiritual thinker. Read more...

January 26, 2009

Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life

By ADAM GOPNIK
Reviewed by Matthew Battles

An exploration of the parallel careers of two nineteenth-century titans. Read more...

January 23, 2009

Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation

By DAVID DENBY
Reviewed by Amy Reiter

A manifesto that combines a history of malicious wit with a critique of culture in the age of the blog. Read more...

January 22, 2009

Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan

By KIM PHILLIPS-FEIN
Reviewed by Barbara Spindel

The boardroom strategists who made "conservatism" a political watchword. Read more...

January 21, 2009

Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel

By EDMUND WHITE
Reviewed by Tess Taylor

The poet who abandoned his verse -- and left behind a legacy that still haunts readers. Read more...

January 20, 2009

The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power

By DAVID SANGER
Reviewed by Richard Pious

The challenges facing the Obama administration. Read more...

January 19, 2009

William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man

By DUNCAN WU
Reviewed by Christopher Byrd

Christopher Byrd on a new life of the romantic iconoclast. Read more...

January 19, 2009

Sing Them Home

By STEPHANIE KALLOS
Review by Veronique de Turenne

A tale of children orphaned by mother nature, from the author of Broken for You. Read more...

January 16, 2009

Things I've Been Silent About: Memories

By AZAR NAFISI
Reviewed by Brooke Allen

The author of Reading Lolita in Tehran looks back at her homeland, through the lens of her youth. Read more...

January 15, 2009

Khan al-Khalili

By NAGUIB MAFHOUZ
Reviewed by Cameron Martin

A love triangle in wartime, from the author of the Cairo Trilogy. Read more...

January 14, 2009

Disquiet

By JULIA LEIGH
Reviewed by Chloe Schama

In this family story, homecoming and tragedy are intertwined. Read more...

January 13, 2009

Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America

By BARRY WERTH
Reviewed by Barbara Spindel

The men who made Darwin, evolution and "survival of the fittest" the topic of a new century. Read more...

January 12, 2009

Land of Marvels

By BARRY UNSWORTH
Reviewed by Donna Rifkind

Power struggles both great and small contaminate the excavation of an ancient Mesopotamian site in the latest from the author of Sacred Hunger. Read more...

January 12, 2009

Death Between the Wars: Historical Mysteries Part IV

By Sarah Weinman

The final installment in our murderous tour of historical mystery and crime fiction. Read more...

January 09, 2009

The Liberal Hour: The 1960s and the Remaking of American Life

By G. CALVIN MACKENZIE AND ROBERT WEISBROT
Reviewed by Ezra Klein

Did a set of arcane procedural changes upend decades of American political stasis? Read more...

January 08, 2009

The City and the Mountains

By JOSE MARIA de ECA de QUEIROS
Reviewed by Christopher Byrd

A sly and savage take on the world of fashionable hedonism. Read more...

January 07, 2009

Shakespeare and Modern Culture

By MARJORIE GARBER
Reviewed by James Parker

The most revered writer in English may understand us better than we do him. Read more...

January 06, 2009

Rancid Pansies

By JAMES HAMILTON-PATERSON
Reviewed by Alexandra Mullen

Samper Fidelis -- Gerald Samper has finally decided to his own self be true. Read more...

January 05, 2009

Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America

By ADAM COHEN
Reviewed by Adam Kirsch

Revisiting the magnitude of the crisis FDR faced can be both inspiring and overwhelming. Read more...

January 02, 2009

Esther's Inheritance

S�NDOR M�RAI
Reviewed by Amelia Atlas

The Hungarian novelist portrays an heiress facing a collapsing way of life in this newly translated work Read more...

January 01, 2009

Bone by Bone

By CAROL O'CONNELL
Reviewed by Sarah Weinman

An army investigator revisits a childhood trauma as new questions arise about his brother's disappearance. Read more...

Daybook

May 21: The musical smash hit Gypsy opened on Broadway on this day in 1959. The bestseller upon which the show is based, Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir Gypsy, told her life as a rags-to-naked success story, and added to…

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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. 

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Earlier Posts
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The Long List
Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now
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. 

Story of My People

Recounting the struggles and eventual dissolution of a family textile business in Prato, Italy, Story of My People is a heartbreaking memoir about the personal impact of globalization.

My Struggle, Book Two

A controversial sensation in Norway, A Man in Love is the second book of six in the series, detailing Knausgaard’s separation from his wife, his move to Stolkholm and the dogged pursuit of a mesmerizing poet.