Reviews & Essays

Displaying articles for: August 2009

September 01, 2009

Crow Planet

By LYANDA LYNN HAUPT
Reviewed by Tess Taylor

In the croak of the raven, a naturalist hears the echo of human song. Read more...

August 31, 2009

The Magicians

By LEV GROSSMAN
Reviewed by Jane Ciabattari

Spell-casters in a dark, Narnia-inspired world. Read more...

August 28, 2009

Everything Matters!

By RON CURRIE, JR.
Reviewed by Amy Benfer

Prophecy and pop culture collide in this story of a life absurdly burdened with apocalyptic knowledge. Read more...

August 27, 2009

Chasing Icarus

By GAVIN MORTIMER
Reviewed by Chuck Leddy

Those daring young men and their flying machines. Read more...

August 26, 2009

An Expensive Education

By NICK McDONELL
Reviewed by Cameron Martin

A set of would-be world savers finds that global crisis tests the limits of their Harvard learning. Read more...

August 25, 2009

Strength in What Remains

By TRACY KIDDER
Reviewed by Heller McAlpin

From the author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, a true tale of survival and self-sacrifice. Read more...

August 24, 2009

The Unit

By NINNI HOLMQVIST
Reviewed by Matthew Shaer

An imaginary future in which the "unproductive" -- especially artists! -- are put to chilling use. Read more...

August 21, 2009

A Paradise Built in Hell

By REBECCA SOLNIT
Reviewed by Melissa H. Pierson

In the wake of catastrophe, the roots of utopias? Read more...

August 20, 2009

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Reviewed by Michelle Goldberg

An argument that the rising Muslim populations in Europe augur dramatic transformations. Read more...

August 19, 2009

Perfecting Sound Forever

By GREG MILNER
Reviewed by James Parker

Is the history of audio recording a chronicle of decline and fall? Read more...

August 18, 2009

The Slippery Year

By MELANIE GIDEON
Reviewed by Amy Reiter

How a couple's midlife crisis led to a family's journey of discovery. Read more...

August 17, 2009

That Old Cape Magic

By RICHARD RUSSO
Reviewed by Charles Taylor

In the latest from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, summer memories retain their bittersweet grip. Read more...

August 14, 2009

The Management Myth

By MATTHEW STEWART
Reviewed by Daniel Menaker

A trained philosopher unthinks his very successful career as a management consultant. Read more...

August 13, 2009

American Radical

By D. D. GUTTENPLAN
Reviewed by Barbara Spindel

Before there were Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, or Talking Points Memo, there was I. F. Stone. Read more...

August 12, 2009

The View from the Bridge

By NICHOLAS MEYER
Reviewed by Edward Champion

A career devoted to the seduction of story -- from Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper to Kirk vs. Kahn. Read more...

August 11, 2009

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

By T. R. REID
Reviewed by Ezra Klein

Why the cure for our ailing medical establishment requires a journey over the horizon. Read more...

August 10, 2009

South of Broad

By PAT CONROY
Review by Veronique de Turenne

A saga of friendship?s claims in a Charleston curiously shadowed by Joyce?s Dublin. Read more...

August 07, 2009

The Maples Stories

By JOHN UPDIKE
Reviewed by Brooke Allen

A career-spanning compendium of stories about a family that closely resembles the author's own. Read more...

August 06, 2009

Child's Play

By CARMEN POSADAS
Reviewed by Sarah Weinman

Miss Marple meets Borges in this slippery thriller from Spain. Read more...

August 05, 2009

The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker and the Maelstrom of Markets

By CHARLES MORRIS
Reviewed by Karen Holt

Can Buffett, Soros, and Volcker chart a course through an economic typhoon? Read more...

August 04, 2009

Inherent Vice

By THOMAS PYNCHON
Reviewed by James Parker

A tuned-in and turned-on private eye walks the decidedly pscyedelic streets of Los Angeles in 1969. Read more...

August 03, 2009

Imperial

By WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN
Reviewed by Paul La Farge

The author of Europe Central takes on the history and current state of a vast borderland, in a book almost as big as his subject. Read more...

Daybook

June 18: George Orwell's "As One Non-Combatant to Another" was published on this day in 1943. Orwell's poem arguing against pacifism quotes from Churchill's "finest hour" speech, delivered to Parliament and the nation on this day in…

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Previously in Daybook
In the Margin

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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Earlier Posts
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The Long List
Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now
The New York Review Abroad

This new collection of some of the best of overseas reportage includes articles from Joan Didion, Tim Judah and Susan Sontag, with topics ranging from impromptu theater in conflict-ridden Sarajevo to a gravediggers’ strike in Liverpool. 

Hour of the Red God

In this searing African crime novel, former Maasai warrior Detective Mollel must defy a corrupt Nairobi government to solve the case of a murdered tribe woman.

The Wonder Bread Summer

This Tarantino-esque thriller finds shop girl Allie and a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine on the run from a vindictive hit man - after she discovers her dress shop is a front for a narcotics ring.