Displaying articles for: February 2010

The Man from Beijing

The creator of the Kurt Wallender novels crafts a sly crime story that reaches back a century and around the globe. Read more...

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

One of the most well-known stories of European literature is shattered, and re-made anew. Read more...

Beyond Ideology

A new book grapples with the question of why our legislative branch has been so frequently gridlocked. Read more...

The Devil and Mr. Casement

The global odyssey of one of the founders of the modern human rights movement. Read more...

The Infinities

In the new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, a dying man's family is subject to a peculiarly divine conspiracy. Read more...

The Case for Books

Essays from a celebrated historian of the book attempt to chart the past and future of an endangered species.

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Catching Up with Tardi

The French comics artist Jacques Tardi appears freshly for American readers, adapting works of existentialist crime and wild surrealism. Read more...

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

A suburban Connecticut town is the setting for an update of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.

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The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them

What is it about Russian literature that seems to warp the lives of those who fall under its spell? Read more...

Shadow Tag

A spouse’s revenge through a false diary is at the heart of a tale of psychological suspense. Read more...

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power

A new biography puts the spotlight on the legendary publisher's understanding of the true value of the news media in ordinary lives. Read more...

A Dark Matter

Peter Straub's new novel turns on a moment of 1960s mystical experimentation gone wrong.

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Union Atlantic

The award-winning author of You Are Not a Stranger Here returns with a poignant novel, set in the new age of financial fiasco.

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Conspirata

Robert Harris returns readers to Rome to witness the twilight of the Republic and the rise of a guileful young Caesar.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The fascinating and moving story of a woman’s biological legacy raises painful questions. Read more...

True Confections

A candy company’s rise and fall provides the backdrop to Katherine Weber’s mouth-watering comedy. Read more...

Where the God of Love Hangs Out

Amy Bloom's new novel of short stories puts the spotlight on cupid's paradoxical heartlessness. Read more...

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and The National Security State

Did the creation of the nuclear bomb turn the Executive Branch into a dictatorship?

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February 10: The Dreadnought Hoax, a practical joke at the British Navy's expense, occurred on this day in 1910. Among the young Bloomsbury conspirators was Virginia Woolf (then Virginia Stephen) and, though she played only a minor…

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.