Latest Book News
Black Sites
This powerful, brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling book recounts the emergence of the widespread use of torture as a central tool in the fight against terrorism.
From A to Zyxt
Ammon Shea spent a year plowing through the entire Oxford English Dictionary -- and lived to write about it.
Forging On
A New York writer recalls how she created and sold hundreds of fake letters “by” celebrities such as Noël Coward and the silent-film star Louise Brooks.
Designing Dictators
How Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin and Mao so effectively spread their messages to the masses.
The Half-Naked and the Undead
Patrolling a city of cemeteries, a police officer can see some strange things.
Raised by Wolves
Julia Blackburn’s memoir of her monstrously self-involved, catastrophically unfit parents manages to be completely distinct yet hauntingly familiar.
Riches to Rags
Kevin Phillips argues that America’s monomaniacal focus on finance is hurting us in the diverse global economy.
The Dog Whisperer
This first novel, a modern twist on “Hamlet,” revolves around a mute boy in a family of dog trainers.
Coming Home
Julia Reed’s Hurricane Katrina memoir describes how she fell in love with New Orleans.
Anybody We Know?
John Darnton’s thriller is set in the office of a major metropolitan newspaper that sounds a lot like The Times.
Era With No Name
A new look at the 12 years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, an era with no catastrophe to brand it.
Pereseverance Brings Misfortune
In this novel, an immigrant laborer defies a gangster and enters the U.S. government’s Chinese Confession Program.
The Swimmer
W. Hodding Carter won a national swimming championship in college, and 20 years later decided it was time to try out for the Olympics.
Consenting Adulterers
The characters in this novel of adultery pursue short-term happiness without regard to long-term consequences.
Sickness Unto Death
In this novel, a 16-year-old bone cancer patient pursues poetry and his own stream of consciousness to create his niche in the literary firmament.
Essay: My Literary Malady
The roll call of famous gout sufferers is long and distinguished. It includes Ben Franklin, Henry James and Karl Marx.
Archive: Book Review Podcast
This week: Jane Mayer, author of “The Dark Side”; Steven Heller, author of “Iron Fists”; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.
Up Front
The historian Alan Brinkley is currently Columbia’s provost, but has also found time to push his biography-in-progress of Henry R. Luce close to completion.
TBR: Inside the List
Christian Lander’s “Stuff White People Like” is No. 17 this week on the nonfiction paperback list. One thing on Lander’s list is, small surprise, writers’ workshops.
Browsing Books: Editor’s Choice
Recently reviewed books of particular interest.
Browsing Books: Paperback Row
Paperback books of particular interest.
Letters: The Kids Are All Right
To the Editor:.
Letters: So Help Me
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Letters: Intimate Sound
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