Displaying articles for: March 2010

Noir

A master of the sentence sends a P.I. in pursuit of the mysteries lurking in the detective novel. Read more...

Matterhorn

An ambitious new novel recreates the chaos of jungle combat in Vietnam -- from one who took part.

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Solar

From the author of Atonement and Saturday, a darkly comic take on modern science and climate change.

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Still Midnight

Family ties -- among criminals, victims, and police -- are at the bottom of a botched kidnapping in Glasgow. Read more...

Germania

Simon Winder takes a highly personal and humorous look at "Britain’s weird twin."

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Public and Private

Andrew Keen ruminates on J. D. Salinger, privacy, social networking, and The Fall of Public Man. Read more...

So Much for That

A woman's battle with cancer resonates with a wider sense of crisis over health care.

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The Ask

A tale of desperation, betrayal, fatherhood and fundraising.

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White Egrets

At the age of eighty, a great poet pits his voice against the encroaching shadows.

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Reality Hunger

A manifesto from David Shields urges a literature of the remix. Read more...

The Allure of Chanel

She claimed that her aspirations were "modest", but her designs made her a champion of liberation. Read more...

The Big Short

The author of Liars’ Poker finds the financial raiders who knew the bubble was destined to burst – and made a historic profit when it did. Read more...

The Birth (and Death) of the Cool

Is it finally actually hip to be square? Read more...

Lonelyhearts

A new dual biography focuses on the lives and times of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. Read more...

About a Mountain

Plans for the nation's largest nuclear waste dump inspire a look at the city in its shadow.

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The Surrendered

From the author of Native Speaker and Aloft, a story of war, tragedy and desire on an operatic scale. Read more...

Still Life

An author's investigation into the surprisingly long-lived world of taxidermy. Read more...

Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

Ariel Gore's new book looks at the complex, sometimes unhappy, relationship modern women have with…happiness. Read more...

Mrs. Adams in Winter

The fascinating chronicle of a First Lady's journey across Europe—as an escaped Napoleon makes a renewed bid for power.

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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.