Music
Daniel Barenboim at La Scala
June 15, 2026Drama number three was the presence on the podium of Daniel Barenboim, the child prodigy born...
Fiction Reviews
The Tin Roof Blowdown By James Lee Burke
June 15, 2026Because he’s a damn good writer James Lee Burke knows how to keep a plot going...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Daughter of Heaven by Nigel Cawthorne
June 14, 2026In a shocking and vaguely incestuous move, she seduced T’ai-tsung’s son, the Emperor Kao-tsung, and from...
Non-Fiction Reviews
A Place for Three Seasons: Crested Butte
June 14, 2026Let us be clear on one thing: physically fit people tend to get more out of...
Fiction Reviews
Murdering Miss Austen
June 14, 2026Jane Austen, whose sharp tongue barely left her cheek during her short lifetime, and, whose caustic...
Non-Fiction Reviews
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
June 14, 2026The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, informally known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a span...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: Some Old Envoys
June 13, 2026Counts who stank of garlic–as did the whole country–had sponged on him for seats in his...
Fiction Reviews
City of Fire By Robert Ellis
June 13, 2026There are red herrings aplenty, but once finished reading the novel I’m left with a sense...
Fiction Reviews
The Headmaster’s Dilemma by Louis Auchincloss
June 13, 2026There is another criticism that Auchincloss has had to counter in his long and illustrious career...
Fiction Reviews
Gentlemen and Players
June 13, 2026Yet it is the amateur, the eccentric and the outsider who plays the hero in the...
Military
The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson
June 12, 2026This long, well documented book by Rick Atkinson is one of the best accounts of any...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: The Oversized Embassy
June 12, 2026Nor, it seems, do Americans get out of their diplomatic fortress the way they used to....
Fiction Reviews
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
June 12, 2026There is also something conversational about the way he writes, a straightforwardness, and a beguiling, gentle...
Fiction Reviews
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
June 12, 2026Though the notorious Roth voice is often manic and crude, we assume that coming from a...
Fiction Reviews
Trashed by Alison Gaylin
June 11, 2026These driven individuals scour celebrity garbage cans, pose as anyone but themselves, lie as though the...
Fiction Reviews
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
June 11, 2026This book isn’t a book, it’s a jazz piece, a series of improvisations on Díaz’s country,...
Non-Fiction Reviews
What is intelligence? by James R. Flynn
June 11, 2026‘The Flynn Effect’ was the phrase Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray coined in their book...
Fiction Reviews
The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg
June 11, 2026A thriller is often a race, but without the understanding of exactly why this girl is...
Psychology
Crossing Styx
June 10, 2026What happens to children is that they usually pass from believing that everything presented by television...
Fiction Reviews
Mike Carey: Novelist and Comic Writer
June 10, 2026"People too content with their lot make lousy protagonists. (laughs) There has to be a source...
Fiction Reviews
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
June 11, 2026This book isn’t a book, it’s a jazz piece, a series of improvisations on Díaz’s country,...
History
Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb
June 9, 2026Between 1945 and 1962, the United States conducted over 300 atmospheric nuclear tests above the ground,...
Fiction Reviews
William Gibson: The Father of Cyberpunk
June 7, 2026"The part of me that walks around and does interviews is incapable of doing very much...
Non-Fiction Reviews
What The Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula
May 22, 2026What The Buddha Taught accurately describes itself as a reliable introduction to Buddhism. As a religion...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Gen·e·sis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin by Robert M. Hazen
May 23, 2026In all the recent noise over the higher steps of evolution and the proper way to...
Fiction Reviews
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
May 26, 2026I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick...
Non-Fiction Reviews
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon
June 7, 2026I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is sort of an extended wake for its subject. There’s very...
Religion
Michael Behe on The Edge of Evolution
June 7, 2026"I conclude that Darwinian processes account for little of the machinery of life, and that most...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means – by William T. Vollmann
May 17, 2026With the exceptions of several of his earlier works, every time I take on a book...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Douglas Ward
June 3, 2026In an age when ad agencies regularly apply “revolutionary” to new car models and digital toys,...
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