Book Review: A Deadly Wandering
/A gripping new book uses a tragedy in Utah to examine the growing menace of texting while driving
Read MoreBad Parenting in the Penny Press!
/When I opened the latest issue of my trusty Outside magazine, I thought the worst in bad-parenting outrage I’d have to face would be found in the letters column. Readers wrote in protesting the recklessness that writer Ted Conover had written about in an earlier issue, a monstrous and self-serving article called “This is How […]
Read MoreComics! Superboy and … who?
/On the one hand, I’ve trained myself over the last two years to hold virtually the entire run of DC Comics at arm’s length, since the comics company I’ve loved for so long is still in the throes of “The New 52,” a top-to-bottom revision of their superhero continuity, a revision almost entirely for the […]
Read MoreBook Review: Dark Forces
/What really happened that night in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, when four US citizens lost their lives when a large group of gunmen attacked the US compound? What were the forces that set the tragedy in motion, and could it have been prevented? A new book asks the hard questions
Read MoreBook Review: 13 Hours in Benghazi
/The events of September 11, 2012 at the American compound in Benghazi have proven extremely politically divisive, but Mitchell Zuckoff's new book strives to stay focused on the men doing the fighting and dying
Read MoreBook Review: The Accidental Abduction
/When a headstrong young woman jumps in a coach in order flee Mr. Wrong, she never guesses she's got a passenger in the back who might just be Mr. Right.
Read MoreBook Review: The Accidental Duchess
/What does a headstrong gambler do when she makes an all-or-nothing bet with an imperious lord - and loses?
Read MoreBook Review: The King's Curse
/King Henry VII's victory at Bosworth transferred the crown of England to the new Tudor dynasty - but it also left many Plantagenets hanging around making Henry VII anxious. His son Henry VIII shared that anxiety, and his gradually-increasing persecution of the last remaining Plantagenets is the heart of Philippa Gregory's new novel.
Read MoreBook Review: Rebel Yell
/Historian S. C. Gwynne has written an immense - and immensely readable - biography of one of the most enduringly enigmatic figures of the American Civil War, Stonewall Jackson
Read MoreBook Review: Band of Giants
/We all know the names of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, but a terrifically engaging new book reminds us that the American Revolution's supporting cast was no less fascinating
Read MoreBook Review: The Birds of Pandemonium
/Spurred by a chance encounter with a wounded bird, Michele Raffin steadily grew her hobby into one of the world's most successful sanctuaries for rare and threatened birds in need of rehabilitation.
Read MoreBook Review: Edge of Eternity
/Ken Follett's enormous "Century Trilogy" comes to its conclusion against the backdrop of the Cold War, the civil rights struggle, and all the other trials of the 20th century
Read MoreBook Review: No Man's Land
/The First World War provided the dark inspiration for an entire generation of great writing, and a big new anthology assembles a stunning variety of that work, from the familiar to the obscure
Read MoreBook Review: A Path Appears
/A compendium of uplifting stories of ordinary people making extraordinary efforts to find ways to help the poor and disadvantaged of the world
Read MoreBook Review: Sword of the Bright Lady
/A mild-mannered engineer goes out walking in Arizona and suddenly finds himself transported to a strange and violent alien world in M. C. Planck's fantastic latest novel
Read MoreBook Review: Wolf in White Van
/A tightly-controlled kaleidoscopic debut novel from the lyricist for the Mountain Goats
Read MoreBook Review: The Emerald Light in the Air
/"It's not your fault." "What's not my fault?" "Nothing. Everything. I don't know."
Read MoreBook Review: Dodging Extinction
/In the face of a black wall of facts about environmental degradation and mass extinction, a scientist and teacher offers a much-needed note of hope
Read MorePenguins on Parade: The Gang of Four!
/Some Penguin Classics feel commercially motivated, and of course that speculation applies firmly to something like big, hefty Four Tragedies, collecting the Penguin texts of Shakespeare’s Hamlet,Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. This edition has been reprinted many times over the last thirty years, for one very commercial reason: schools all over the world use it […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Rise of the Seleukid Empire, 323-223 BC
/In the wake of Alexander the Great's death, many voracious sub-kingdoms sprang up along the routes of his famous conquests. One of these would go on to become the Seleucid Empire, and a new book details its first century of existence
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