Book Review: The Second World Wars
/Veteran military historian Victor Davis Hanson writes a broad-scale history of the Second World War.
Read MoreBook Review: The Collector of Lives
/Giorgio Vasari, the author of a fundamental and beloved collection of the lives of Renaissance artists, here gets a lively and readable biography of his own.
Read MoreBook Review: Grant
/Bestselling biographer Ron Chernow tells the story of famous general and infamous president Ulysses S. Grant.
Read MoreBook Review: Trump is F*cking Crazy
/Former newscaster and sports commentator Keith Olbermann is a new star of YouTube for his strident opposition to President Trump; his new book provides the transcript.
Read MoreBook Review: Iran: A Modern History
/A sprawling new history of Iran from the 16th century to the present brings the multi-faceted story of Persia alive.
Read MoreBook Review: Istanbul
/Orhan Pamuk's bestselling love letter to Istanbul receives a gorgeous new illustrated edition.
Read MoreBook Review: Tamed & Untamed
/Two beloved writers of natural history team up to tell stories about a host of animal species, from the ones in our homes to the ones in our gardens to the ones still prowling the wild.
Read MoreBook Review: Calder
/The legendary avant-garde sculptor Alexander Calder gets his very first biography, written by art critic Jed Perl
Read MoreBook Review: A Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri
/A new translation of a virtually-unknown gem: the writings of a French trapper, trader, and voyageur in the rough and beautiful wilds of the American frontier of his day.
Read MoreBook Review: Leonardo Da Vinci
/Bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson adds another massive tome to the pile of those devoted to the quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci.
Read MoreBook Review: The Big Book of Rogues and Villains
/The latest enormous anthology from Otto Penzler features the dandies of the demimonde, the stylish thieves and ruthless killers of popular fiction.
Read MorePassing the Torch in the Penny Press
/This moment was bound to happen. It’s been approaching steadily for years, of course, and its tread has been especially audible in the last few months. But lots of other reading gets in the way, and the torrent of books never lessens, and it was easy to get distracted. But then the moment comes: the […]
Read MoreBook Review: Stalin - Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941
/Stephen Kotkin's groundbreaking multi-volume biography of Stalin continues with the uneasy alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Read MoreBook Review: Russia in Flames
/A big, lively new history assesses the troubled life and blighted nature of Bolshevism.
Read MorePenguins on Parade: Picnic at Hanging Rock!
/Some Penguin Classics serve as enjoyable reminders that more things in Heaven and Earth fall under the heading of “classic” than the usual lineup of Dickens and Austen. Penguin has always been good about this, and in the last twenty years or so they’ve improved even on their own track record, sometimes with questionable results […]
Read MoreBook Review: Vanguard of the Revolution
/The grand, global history of Communism's century-long reign of terror is the subject of A. James McAdams' authoritative new book.
Read MoreBook Review: Adults in the Room
/Former finance minister for Greece Yanis Varoufakis has written a book about his time on the world stage during his country's financial crisis.
Read MoreAlex Rider: Never Say Die!
/Our book today is a sweet bit of sweaty, skate-boarding adolescent relief: Alex Rider: Never Say Die, which represents the long-awaited return of writer Anthony Horowitz to writing the adventures of his signature creation, “the world’s greatest teen spy,” Alex Rider – who, we’re told, is 14, 5 foot nine inches in height, brown-eyed, and […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Meaning of Belief
/The gap between the religious and the "New Atheists" seems wider than ever - but have both sides failed even to understand each other? A pocket-sized new book examines some of the oldest questions of all.
Read MoreMythology’s 75th Anniversary!
/Our book today is the kind of lavish surprise that occasionally rewards the faithful: a big, heavy, ornate new 75th-anniversary edition from Black Dog & Leventhal of Edith Hamilton’s rock-solid, endurably reprinted classic Mythology. Subtitled “Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes,” the book retails all the most famous stories from Greek and Roman mythology (with […]
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