Book Review: The Murder of Cleopatra
/When examining the death of Cleopatra, it's inevitable: sooner or later, you're going to have to deal with asp-holes
Read MoreGeographica: Baboons!
/A little (OK, a bit) frisson of horror at a picture in the latest National Geographic: the story is that gangs of baboons in the Cape Town area have grown progressively bolder and more organized at stealing stuff from humans – “Raiding baboons open doors, yank out windows, and remove roof tiles” says one researcher, [...]
Read MoreA Pair of Petty Outrages in the Penny Press!
/The Penny Press has been mostly behaving itself lately, which is an oddly mixed blessing. When I’m happily reading along, encountering one great piece after another while ensconced in my hole-in-the-wall lunch-time getaway, of course I’m intellectually satisfied (and once again mystified as to how other thinking readers somehow get along without such a steady [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Spartacus
/He escaped from slavery, fought Rome, and became an immortal name - but what can we really know about Spartacus?
Read MoreBook Review: The Praetorian Guard
/They guarded emperors, they served emperors, and occasionally they killed emperors - they were the Praetorian Guard
Read MoreBook Review: The Devil's Looking Glass
/In his latest adventure, Mark Chadbourn's swashbuckling Elizabethan adventurer Will Swyfte continues his battle against the supernatural forces of the Unseelie Court
Read MoreA Royal Controversy in the Penny Press!
/Even if I hadn’t seen Hilary Mantel’s now-infamous piece in the 21 February London Review of Books, I’d certainly have heard about it by now. I’ve written quite a bit on the Tudors, and I’ve written quite a bit on the Windsors, and I’ve written quite a bit on Mantel – even if I’d somehow [...]
Read MoreTroppo Sottile
/Venice has traded flinty commercial acumen and world-weary merchant princes for an ennui worthy of M. John Harrison's science fiction; her profession has now become the art of insubstantiality. For centuries authors have tried and failed to capture her. Steve Donoghue surveys the glorious wreckage.
Read MoreBook Review: The Leviathan Effect
/A enormous storm is bearing down on Washington D.C., and the President and his staff are confronted with a group of people who say they can stop the hurricane - for a price
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia!
/Some Penguin Classics seem to come along at just the right time – actually a great many of them do, but this time was just right for Maurice Evans’ wonderful 1977 edition of that lost, sparkling diamond-mine of English literature, Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The Arcadia got its start in the [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Blood Sisters
/Sarah Gristwood (author of the utterly delightful "Arbella: England's Lost Queen") charts the triumphs and tragedies of the seven key women in the Wars of the Roses
Read MoreBook Review: The Average American Marriage
/The horny, feckless narrator of Kultgen's "The Average American Male" returns: married, with kids - and, of course, lusting after a co-worker
Read MoreThe Rest of the Redesign in the Penny Press!
/Which isn’t to say that issue of The New Republic had only one noteworthy item – far from it! I confess, I was worried after the first issue of the redesign. I knew TNR had been bought by a 15-year-old Internet gazillionaire, and I naturally assumed that could never be a good thing. I envisioned [...]
Read MoreA Tired Pilgrim in the Penny Press!
/Novelist Ian McEwan writes a deliberately provocative little squib for the newly-redesigned New Republic (disastrously redesigned as well – it disappears on the newsstand, especially this current issue, which for no particular reason has no cover illustration, just the boring new logo on a field of white), something called “The God That Fails” and sub-titled [...]
Read MoreComics: Marvel First - WWII Superheroes
/The Angel - the Silver Scorpion - the Destroyer - the Black Marvel - the Blazing Skull: not exactly household names today, but in the dark days of World War II, they fought the forces of evil for the entertainment of a new kind of reader: comic book fans
Read MoreBook Review: A Great and Monstrous Thing
/"Houses, Churches, mix'd together - Streets, unpleasant in all Weather" - so wrote the poet about resolute, dissolute London, whose 18th century excesses are the subject of a grand new book
Read MoreBook Review: How Literature Saved My Life
/David Shields, author of the 'manifesto' "Reality Hunger," is still unhappy with boring old books. In fact, he's still writing books about how unhappy he is.
Read MoreBook Review: A Week in Winter
/Unsure of what to do with her life, a woman turns an old stone house into an inn on the coast of Ireland, and strangers begin to gather ...
Read MoreBook Review: I Will Have Vengeance
/In 1931 Naples, Commissario Ricciardi pursues the most desperate of criminals, driven by an absolute commitment to justice - and helped by a gift he alone possesses.
Read MoreBook Review: The Aviator's Wife
/A new novel tells the story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, famous author and wife of an even more famous jerk.
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