Displaying articles for: June 2010

An American Type

The final posthumous volume of autobiographical fiction from Henry Roth—seven decades after his legendary debut, Call It Sleep.

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Radical

Before Saul Alinsky, there was no such thing as a "community organizer."

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Work Song

Morrie Morgan is back, hiding out from Chicago gangsters in a Montana mining town.

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Lives Like Loaded Guns

The familial passions, jealousies, and deceit that swirled around the Belle of Amherst accentuate the rareness of her gifts.

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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

A tale of love and intrigue set in the cultural cross-currents of 19th-century Nagasaki, from the author of Cloud Atlas.

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The World That Never Was

The close of the 19th century saw the birth of political terrorism -- and the unintended consequences of trying to stop it. Read more...

Dark Harbor

The shadowy allure of New York City's once-vibrant port, and the scandal that inspired On the Waterfront.

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A Fierce Radiance

A World War II effort to develop antibiotics—and the ethical complications that arise—are seen through the lens of a photographer's eye.

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Trials of the Diaspora

A lawyer assembles a remarkably detailed history of English anti-Semitism, from the Middle Ages to the present.

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Whirl

The pianist and composer returns to the keyboard with tunes both classic and fresh. Read more...

A Lost King

A long-out-of-print American classic that played the familiar melody of a family struggle in an exuberant new key.

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The Subtle Body and The Great Oom

Two new books unfold the improbable journey of yoga from Hindu practice to global obsession.

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Before Roe v. Wade

A journalist and a law professor collect documents that illuminate one of our era's most divisive court battles.

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Two Women's Modern Odyssey

How two American women, Sylvia Beach and Margaret Anderson, helped row James Joyce’s Ulysses to shore.

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Imperial Bedrooms

The author revisits the characters of his debut novel, Less Than Zero, in a Los Angeles haunted by dread.

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The Hyperlink War

Let the pundits rage: Learning not to lean on links can make you a better writer. Read more...

The Passage

Justin Cronin's hefty new work of modern fantasy promises to transport the reader away from everyday cares—but can it deliver?

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Cognitive Surplus

An internet guru's audacious explanation of how the web is turning free time into a shared global resource of inspiring dimensions.

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Parisians

The acclaimed biographer of Balzac and Victor Hugo reveals the secret history of Paris, from Marie Antoinette to Mitterand.

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Still Evolving: New Jazz Recordings

A critic's recent listening suggest reports of jazz's death have been greatly overstated. Read more...

Extra Lives

A dedicated gamer's reflections on the power, the potential, and the price of ever-multiplying virtual worlds. Read more...

Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism

A new book on the life of the controversial writer, teacher, and thinker is a labor of thwarted scholarly love. Read more...

On the Outskirts of Normal

A single mother's affecting memoir of adoption, small town life, and constructing moments of order amid life's chaos.

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The Shallows

A cogent and thoroughly researched articulation of the growing fear that the Internet is driving us to dangerous distraction.

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Young Romantics

A new group biography of the free-spirited, socially radical, and doom-struck circle of Percy and Mary Shelley, Byron, and Keats.

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The Eitingons

Tracing her family history leads the author into a forest of Cold War mysteries.

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Strong Horses and Small States

Two recent books about conflict in the Middle East reveal the limitations of thinking simplistically about the region.

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Witz

In this overstuffed, satirical tale, the last Jew alive becomes the object of the world's fascination, desires, and fears.

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The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was the richest and most successful writer of his time, but his life—as this superlative biography reveals—was a mess.

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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.