Edward Champion on the intergalactic ambitions of Iain M. Banks?s series of speculative novels. Read more...

A prescription for Republican renewal. Read more...

The question of where the author would send her daughters to school prompts a hilariously outraged reflection on contemporary culture. Read more...

How you merge says more about you than you think. Read more...

A bedtime story turns on its teller. Read more...

Exploring a philosophy set in stone and stained glass. Read more...

Tales of the flesh and the spirit -- in which both feel the pull of gravity. Read more...

Tom Carson on Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer's classic account of the 1968 conventions. Read more...

An argument for more open borders, from a politically conservative perspective. Read more...

The idiosyncratic novelist tells the true story of his long-running race against his own body's limits. Read more...

The author revisits the railway journey he chronicled three decades ago, through a transformed continent. Read more...

A self-tormenting family's drama, shot through with moments of beauty. Read more...

Race-baiting, a wrong turn, and the complex aftermath of violence in the latest from a socially conscious crime novelist. Read more...

Fresh off his hallucinogenic chronicle of Las Vegas, the founder of Gonzo journalism staggered his way through a presidential election -- and delivered a political classic. Read more...

The author of The Emperor of Ocean Park pens a story of political intrigue in the era of Watergate. Read more...

Thousands of Americans immigrated to the USSR in pursuit of a socialist utopia. What happened to them? Read more...

Seeking the extraordinary in the life of "ordinary" man from Wyoming. Read more...

Pulling back the curtain on a Polish writer?s darkly satiricial mastery. Read more...

John Freeman looks at landscape, fiction, and history in Peter Matthiesen?s refashioned Florida epic. Read more...

At the Cold War's height, the Olympic Games were also a proxy battle between superpowers. Read more...

A debut novel about unrest in an immigrant neighborhood channels Faulkner and Joyce. Read more...

Is it time to get rid of bottled water? And is tap water truly the answer? Read more...

The iconoclastic literary critic examines the inner workings of the novel. Read more...

An aging denizen of a mental institution unfolds the story of her youth -- and the secrets that led to her incarceration. Read more...

The subtle, powerful satire of a writer who focused on the close-at-hand. Read more...

The dramatic life of an iconoclastic Italian writer. Read more...