In Paperback: The Long Road to Antietam
/The bloodiest day in United States history is the subject of Richard Slotkin's riveting book, now out in paperback
Read MoreThe bloodiest day in United States history is the subject of Richard Slotkin's riveting book, now out in paperback
Read MoreOur book today is C. S. Forester’s 1937 canon-shot of a Napoleonic sea-novel, Beat to Quarters (published in England as, sigh, The Happy Return), the book that introduced the character of Captain Horatio Hornblower to the world and single-handedly re-invigorated a sub-genre that had been quiescent for a century. The story is taut. Hornblower’s ship, [...]
Read MoreIn Kim Stanley Robinson's epic space opera - now out in paperback - the mankind of two centuries hence has conquered space and colonized the solar system, but as usual, it carries its own dark side wherever it goes
Read MoreAs we’ve noted in the past, the wonders of National Geographic – unparalleled anywhere else in the Penny Press – come with a price tag. Just as the magazine is capable of infusing your day with the curiosity and sheer joy of exploration (the two exultations on which it was founded), so too is it [...]
Read MoreJust the other day, at the bookstore, a sane-and-normal-seeming customer asked me for a “fair” biography of Hitler. When I stared at her, she elaborated: a biography that wasn’t “slanted,” that had no “axe to grind,” that reflected the fact that although Hitler might have been an evil man, he was also indisputably a great [...]
Read MoreTradition has it that Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote his novels to make a name (and a fortune) for himself with the British public, but a thrilling new book wonders if he didn't also do it to re-shape reality itself - in his favor.
Read MoreTwo of the most famous names of the Italian Renaissance - Machiavelli and Leonardo Da Vinci - team up to untangle a series of horrific murders!
Read MoreA columnist for the Financial Times looks at what the Roman poet Horace has meant to him over the years
Read MoreEver since Margaret Thatcher died in April and the press set about heaping ordure on her still-warm corpse, I’ve been busily, sadly reading every notice, just as I did for Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, and just as I’m sure I will for Mikhail Gorbachev. In Thatcher’s case, the sheer intensity of the [...]
Read MoreThe July issue of Vanity Fair has many standard features that are depressing. First and most noticeably, there’s the cover story-hand job common to most glossy magazines; in this case it’s a ‘profile’ of Hollywood’s current top box office Everyman, Channing Tatum, whose he-man pouting on the cover over the banner reading “Channing Tatum: An [...]
Read MoreThe popular philosopher returns to the ideas that made him famous: that man is an animal, that optimism is misguided, and that the very idea of progress is just a re-heated left-over from the zeals of Christianity.
Read MoreThe signature work by one of the prickly fathers of the Italian Renaissance humanism gets its inaugural print edition in the latest offering from Harvard's magnificent I Tatti Renaissance Library
Read MoreLiterary reputations are a lot like ghosts – they make odd noises, they hang around long after their heartbeat has ceased, and they attract the belief of the credulous all over the world. Just as a bloated mass of spectral ectoplasm was reputedly once a two-timing grocer, so a bloated mass of lazy bloviation [...]
Read MoreIn a stirring new account of the burning of the White House and the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, the individual men and women of the conflict step into the spotlight in all their very human contradictions
Read MoreJust when you thought the whole ‘negativity-in-book-reviews’ teacup-tempest had finally blown itself out, no less an unlikely Lady Bracknell than Clive James stirs it back up again. Himself a critic of legendary and delightful omni-competence, James has recently announced that his health has gone into serious decline (he just published a poem about it – [...]
Read MoreThroughout the year, the New York Review of Books is celebrating its 50th anniversary by reprinting excerpts from pieces by some of its most lauded contributors. The excerpts appear on the last page of every issue, and considering the lineup of literary powerhouses the NYRB has always boasted, you’d think the presence of such a [...]
Read MoreThe violent, heroic Wild West of the Bible is given a magnificent new translation and commentary
Read MoreTwo highlights this week from the curiously large number of magazines I read whose titles start with “New” (that also starts the name of the region I call home): In The New Yorker, in addition to some other wonderful stuff (Anthony Lane on “Fast & Furious 6″ is predictably hilarious, for instance), there’s a simple, [...]
Read MoreIn advance of the movie, Max Brooks' epic zombie novel (now with the customary ugly movie cover) is given a big reprint run in search of even more fans ...
Read MoreA debut novel of alternate history spins out one of the most tantalizing hypotheticals of the past: what if Anne Boleyn had managed to give King Henry VIII a healthy male heir? Some of the answers - and some of the resulting mysteries - may surprise you.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.