Book Review: Edwardian Opulence
/The richest denizens of the Edwardian Era swan around in their finest stuff, immortalized by the likes of Sargent and Boldini, and a sumptuous new book from Yale University Press records it all
Read MoreTwelve Against the Gods!
/Our book today is that hilarious, engrossing, inimitable classic, Twelve Against the Gods, written under the pen-name of “William Bolitho” in 1929 (the same author also wrote the enormously enjoyable Murder for Profit) and celebrating a baker’s dozen historical figures who epitomize one aspect or another of the adventurer’s ideal as conceived by our author, [...]
Read MoreBook Review: The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones
/Jack Wolf's risk-taking debut explores the boundaries of insanity and rationality
Read MoreLad-Lit Lists in the Penny Press!
/Although I’m an unapologetic fan of the big glossy men’s-interest magazines on the market today (I subscribe to a whole slew of them, from Outside and Men’s Journal to Esquire and Details), I know better than to go to most of them for literary opinions. Not because there aren’t some very intelligent people working there, [...]
Read MoreNow in Paperback: Proof of Heaven
/A neurosurgeon's reflections on his time in a coma convince him that it held the secret to the universe.
Read MoreBook Review: Abide with Me
/In a novel that's not as easy as it looks, a soldier comes home to his small Vermont town from Afghanistan - and to the young woman he left behind there.
Read MoreClassics Reissued: Shadows and Strongholds
/In a welcome reprint, a brave but untried young 12th century knight must learn how to fight - and take a bride
Read MoreClassics Reissued: Dune
/The greatest sci-fi novel of all time is inaugurated into the Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics library
Read MoreNew Yorker Joys in the Penny Press!
/Last week’s New Yorker started off with a letter, written by Jane Scholz, that I’ll quote in full: As is the case with the tragic death of Aaron Swartz, the tragic death of any young person is an incredibly sad event, wharever the cause. I object, however, to the effort of some of [...]
Read MoreBack in Paperback: The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy
/David Halberstam's 1968 profile of candidate Robert Kennedy gets a new reprint for a new generation
Read MoreBook Review: Honor
/The barbaric custom of 'honor killing' is the hinge on which best-selling author Elif Shafak's complex new novel turns
Read MoreBook Review: The Sunshine When She's Gone
/With the arrival of a new baby, a young Brooklyn couple say good-bye to sleep ... and start making some very strange decisions.
Read MoreBook Review: Invisible Armies
/A big new book looks at the long history of guerrilla warfare and centers its lessons on our own time.
Read MoreBook Review: All the Light There Was
/In this historical novel, the Armenian community of Paris negotiates the arrival of the Nazis - and a young girl navigates her first romance
Read MoreBook Review: The Library of America Aldo Leopold
/The most cherished nature classic since "Walden" gets the sparkling Library of America canonization
Read MoreElizabeth!
/Our book today is Sarah Bradford’s 1996 biography Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen, and seeing it on my shelves always reminds me of a frequent quip by an old friend of mine, a Boston trial lawyer with (as Agatha Christie might put it) a brain like a bacon-slicer: when you want something [...]
Read MoreBook Review: The Blue Book
/A young woman finds herself on a ship at sea with both her fiance and a mysterious man from her past, and it's all like something you'd find in a book ...
Read MoreBook Review: Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment
/The greatest enemy of freedom is ... democracy? Come get to know Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson, ladies and gentlemen!
Read MoreBook Review: The Carriage House
/A patrician family copes with all kinds of disappointment in Louisa Hall's not-at-all-disappointing debut novel
Read MoreRecreations of a Literary Man!
/Our book today is a 1883 collection of odd ruminations by Percy Fitzgerald called Recreations of a Literary Man (or Does Writing Pay?), one in a virtually endless stream of books Fitzgerald produced once he left off prosperous lawyering in Ireland and made his way to teeming, word-drunk Victorian London to try his hand at [...]
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