From gentle breezes to devastating storms, this element shapes our world.

A young veteran of the war in Iraq turns to fiction in his struggle to make sense of a perplexing combat.

How the Roberts Court became the administration's most unpredictable opponent.

Salman Rushdie unfolds the story of a writer''s life plunged into nightmare by a dying cleric's verdict on his novel.

On the road in search of self-awareness.

Following the lazy twists and turns of a river steeped in history and threatened by corruption.

A star on the rise during Hollywood's Golden Age.

The Senate's champion of segregation endured long after the Dixiecrats were history.

How black holes paint the universe, and other wonders of the cosmos.

The novelist maps a twenty-first century city through the lives of four of its natives.

A matchless man of letters contemplates the end.

Cynthia Voigt's powerful classics follow a group of siblings who remake their family through a timeless story of love, struggle, and adventure.

A guide to understanding what we do when we aren't awake.

A writer's attempt to capture the life that only the body knows.

The fight over free speech on one campus and a secret campaign against academic activists.

A Cockney thug wins the lottery.

The rise of a term of opprobrium reveals some fundamental truths about our culture.

The story of an American artist is also the snapshot of a lost world.

After a mysterious flu wipes out most of the U.S. population, a man and his canine companion struggle to survive.

The legendary film star may have been a better actress in private life than she was on the screen.

A farmer who loves his cows more than his wife has his world turned upside down by the arrival of a migrant worker.

A manual for navigating our highly disruptive economy.

The depths of a celebrity-fevered culture are mapped in a Hollywood Inferno.

Buffeted by tragedies -- personal and national -- two teens try to find love.

Should we care about a new posthumous recording of the legendary pianist? Yes.

A crime reporter uncovers a big story in a novel that suggests Wodehouse in Thailand.

Stranded in Saudi Arabia, a salesman confronts the hollowed-out remains of his life.

Wrestling with the eternal quandary at the heart of the universe.

London's "psychogeographer" looks at the transformations wrought by Olympic spectacle.

Love leaps off the page.