Book Review: Bolivar
/The "George Washington of South America" was far more complex and interesting than his familiar tag-line suggests - as a big, fantastic new biography makes abundantly clear
Read MoreSix for the Society!
/Fifty years ago the great Melville Bell Grosvenor, then the presiding quintessence of National Geographic (son of the magazine’s first editor-in-chief, and grandson of Alexander Graham Bell), collaborated with a bullpen of very creative people and dreamed up a line of National Geographic books, big, heavy, lavishly illustrated things that acted as subject- specific compendiums [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Lover at Last
/In her latest bestseller, J. R. Ward's two most loved (and lusted-after) bad-boy vampires finally get their turn in the spotlight
Read MoreBook Review: Christian Beginnings
/A new book by a legendary scholar charts the journey of early Christianity from a charismatic cult to the official religion of an empire
Read MoreBook Review: Roses Have Thorns
/A young Swedish girl travels to England and becomes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I herself
Read MoreBook Review: The Creation of Anne Boleyn
/She's an icon, a cautionary tale, a baleful notoriety - she's Anne Boleyn, who bewitched a king and drove him to remake a world, all for the sake of a dream she could never give him. A fascinating new book looks at the way all the ways history has made and re-made Henry VIII's most infamous queen
Read MoreBook Review: The Chalice
/An intelligent, sensitive Dominican novice finds herself at the heart of passionate conspiracies in the England of Henry VIII
Read MoreThe Earl of Gallipoli
/The typical image of Winston Churchill comes from the dark days of World War II: a fat, old, bald Prime Minister eloquently defying Hitler's Germany. But before there was a monument there was a man, as an engaging new biography brings to light.
Read MoreBook 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.
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