Book Review: Shakespeare's Prince
/An exhaustive - and immensely enjoyable - line-by-line examination of Shakespeare's final play
Read MoreBook Review: Fatal Rivalry
/While Henry VIII was away fighting the French, his kingdom was invaded from the north by James of Scotland. It was defended by thousands of brave soldiers, a handful of ambitious courtiers - and one remarkable woman.
Read MoreBook Review: Royal Inheritance
/Pretty young Audrey has grown up in the Tudor court thinking she's the daughter of King Henry VIII's tailor - but what if her real father is the king himself?
Read MoreBen-Hur!
/Our book today is another Victorian masterpiece of melodrama, Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur. Sub-titled A Tale of the Christ, it was an immediate hit upon publication, sold in record-setting numbers on four continents, and was very quickly translated into virtually every language on Earth (several different classes of college undergraduates vied for the dubious [...]
Read MoreThe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes!
/Our book today is Arthur Conan Doyle’s unsinkable 1892 story collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which collects the twelve Holmes & Watson stories published from summer of 1891 to summer of 1892 in the Strand magazine. These stories followed in the wake of the novellas A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four – they were written at Doyle’s [...]
Read MoreComics: Forever Evil!
/DC Comics’ just-concluded big crossover event, “Trinity War,” ended with a plot twist designed to launch its new big crossover event, “Forever Evil.” The plot twist was the opening of a portal to an alternate dimension, through which came the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of the Justice League (Ultraman instead of Superman, Owlman [...]
Read MoreBook Review: In the Olden Time
/Victorian historical painting and Victorian historical fiction met in a glorious collaboration of national mythology. Andrew Sanders, in a magnificent new study from Yale University Press, gives that collaboration a delightfully thorough questioning.
Read MoreThe Library!
/Our book today is Sarah Stewart’s merry, winsome 1995 Caldecott-winning children’s book The Library, about a little girl named Elizabeth Brown who starts reading as soon as she can and then continues doing it ‘at an incredible rate’ for the rest of her life. She reads under the covers at night. She reads on the [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Two Boys Kissing
/In bestselling author David Levithan's new novel, two boys try to set a world's record for the longest kiss - and their adventure is cheered on by the most unlikely chorus
Read MoreThe Cape at Summer’s End!
/Our book today is Cape Cod by William Berchen and Monica Dickens, a slim, brimmingly illustrated vacation volume from 1972. As I’ve noted before, the end of summer always makes me think of all the time I’ve spent at the Cape over the years, and although Boston is still panting under the fat hand of [...]
Read MoreThe Empire Strikes Back
/King and Woolman's new book Assassination of the Archduke, boasts new sources, very close to Franz Ferdinand and his wife -- too close?
Read MoreInk Chorus: No Passion Spent!
/Our book today is George Steiner’s meaty 1996 collection of critical essays, No Passion Spent, which features 21 pieces drawn from two decades of Steiner’s long career as a literary journalist. During the course of that career, he sold pieces on a wide array of topics to an almost equally wide array of paying venues, [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Ninety Percent of Everything
/International shipping provides virtually everything around you as you read this (including the computer you're reading it on), and yet most people no nothing about this reclusive industry. Rose George's new book sheds some light.
Read MorePigs in Clover!
/Our book today is Frances Noyes Hart’s 1931 charmer Pigs in Clover, which purports to record a roundabout journey by car through France that she took one holiday season with her husband Edward Hart, the son of the man who was present at the creation, so to speak, of the Associated Press. Long before that [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Armor and Blood
/The Battle of Kursk was one of the most epic confrontations in the history of warfare - a vivid new history calls it the turning point of the entire Second World War
Read MoreBook Review: I'd Know You Anywhere, My Love
/No matter how an imaginative child might shape-shift, a mother's love follows right along in Nancy Tillman's enchanting new picture book
Read MoreComics: A Series of Unfortunate Events!
/Huge multi-part special-run series make good business for four-color comics companies, I get that. The basic model is now infinitely replicated: the central spine of a six or eight-issue mini-series feeding into an extended nervous system of tie-in issues designed to part nervous fanboy completists from their apparently-inexhaustible spending money. Nowadays, the leverage placed on [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Planet Without Apes
/More than at any point in their collective history, mankind's great ape cousins face the threat of total extinction. A passionate new book outlines all the threats - and clings to some hope
Read MoreComics: The End of the Legion
/DC Comics is currently in the middle of a big readership-grabbing multi-issue crossover event called “Trinity War,” and that big event is going to blend into the next, something called “Forever Evil” that will feature another mini-series and some collectible, gimmicky covers. The company’s successful reboot of its entire line of comics, its “New [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Trash Animals
/Rats, snakes, gulls, cockroaches, and half a dozen other notorious varmints - a delightful new anthology takes readers deep inside the world of the animals they love to hate
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