Bob Odenkirk: By the Book
The actor and author of “A Load of Hooey” keeps a volume of “hippie philosophizing” on his shelves as a counterbalance to his “angry, skeptical, scowling mind.”
Books News & Reviews
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Books of The Times
‘The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House’
By CHUCK TODD
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In ‘The Stranger,” Chuck Todd, moderator of “Meet the Press,” dissects President Obama’s record.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times
Books of The Times
‘The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House’
By CHUCK TODD
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In ‘The Stranger,” Chuck Todd, moderator of “Meet the Press,” dissects President Obama’s record.
Books of The Times
‘Yes Please’
By AMY POEHLER
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
Amy Poehler’s new book, “Yes Please,” includes backstage “Saturday Night Live” stories, lists, old photos and guest essays from both her parents.
Children’s Books
Digging to Freedom
By MARIA RUSSO
Twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall came down, a picture book finds hope in one family’s escape from the East.
Books of The Times
‘All the Truth Is Out’
By MATT BAI
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
“All the Truth Is Out,” by Matt Bai, makes the case that the Gary Hart scandal of 1987 left a lasting scar on America’s political life.
Books of The Times
‘Let Me Be Frank With You’
By RICHARD FORD
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
In Richard Ford’s fourth Frank Bascombe book, “Let Me Be Frank With You,” his Everyman hero is 68, retired and living in Default Mode.
An Author Mines His Niche, One Usually Filled With Song
By NATE CHINEN
The writer David Ritz reflects on his career of helping celebrities, often recording artists, put their lives on the page.
Legions of Faiths, Girded for Battle
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
The latest Norton anthology takes on major world religions, in 4,000-plus pages.
The Saturday Profile
A Writer Whose Pen Never Rests, Even Facing Death
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Clive James, 75, who has leukemia, continues to publish poetry and work on other projects in a career that has defied definition.
E-Book Mingles Love and Product Placement
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
Product placement in a novel might strike some as unseemly, but “Find Me I’m Yours” — an e-book that also makes room for sponsored content from companies — is not like most novels.
Books of The Times
‘Station Eleven’
By EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
Emily St. John Mandel’s novel “Station Eleven” envisions a world in which a strain of flu wipes out most of civilization.
Artisanal Terror From Lilliputian Presses
By DANA JENNINGS
On Halloween, a look at three small publishers of horror novels and comics.
Children's Books
Growing a Library-Tree
By MARIA RUSSO
In the third offering in the Red Knit Cap Girl picture-book series, the heroine and her animal friends create a library in an inviting tree.
Former Navy SEAL Team Member Investigated for Bin Laden Disclosures
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and NICHOLAS KULISH
A former Navy SEAL who wrote a best seller about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden is under criminal investigation for disclosing classified material.
Books of The Times
‘Respect’
By DAVID RITZ
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
“Respect” is David Ritz’s latest biography, this one about the life of Aretha Franklin.
Galway Kinnell, Plain-Spoken Poet, Is Dead at 87
By DANIEL LEWIS
Mr. Kinnell’s works could encompass celebrations of Manhattan street life and meditations on mortality. In 1983, he won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award.
Newly Released
Books by David Nicholls and Edward St. Aubyn
By CARMELA CIURARU
Recent releases include fiction by David Nicholls, Edward St. Aubyn, Yannick Grannec and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.
Books of The Times
‘The Book of Strange New Things’
By MICHAEL FABER
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
In Michel Faber’s novel “The Book of Strange New Things,” a missionary dispatched to a faraway planet gets desperate missives from his wife.
The Bad Boy of Soviet Writers
By RACHEL DONADIO
Emmanuel Carrère’s new book profiles Edward Limonov, the bad boy of Soviet dissident writers.
Books of The Times
‘Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh’
By JOHN LAHR
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
“Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh” is John Lahr’s thick volume on the playwright.
Books
Healing the Metaphorical Heart
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
Martha Weinman Lear returns to the territory she covered in “Heartsounds,” but this is not a sequel so much as a rueful epilogue, a brief account of her own recent skirmish with heart disease.
Closing a Chapter of a Literary Life
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
Ahead of the American publication of his latest work, “The Book of Strange New Things,” Michel Faber discusses it and why it will be his last novel.
Laugharne Journal
In Wales, a Toast to Dylan Thomas on His 100th Birthday
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
In a country that has long been ill at ease with its hard-living son, Thomas’s granddaughter is trying to refocus public attention on the poet’s work.
Books of The Times
‘At Home in Exile’
By ALAN WOLFE
Reviewed by MICHAEL S. ROTH
In “At Home in Exile,” Alan Wolfe argues that the Diaspora has fostered in Jews a commitment to defend the rights of other groups and to live by universal values wherever they may be.
Time Is Running Out for a Grand Central Bookstore
By RACHEL ABRAMS
Squeezed out by new construction, Posman Books, which has been at Grand Central Terminal for 15 years, will close its store there on Dec. 31.
Sunday Book Review
‘The Book of Strange New Things’
By MICHEL FABER
Reviewed by MARCEL THEROUX
Illustration by Paul Sahre
In Michel Faber’s novel, a pastor heads off to take up a new ministry on another planet.
‘The Book of Strange New Things’
By MICHEL FABER
Reviewed by MARCEL THEROUX
Illustration by Paul Sahre
In Michel Faber’s novel, a pastor heads off to take up a new ministry on another planet.
Bruce Springsteen: By the Book
The musician and author of the new picture book “Outlaw Pete” likes reading about cosmology: “I find men and women struggling to answer the deepest questions we can ask freeing.”
‘F’
By DANIEL KEHLMANN. Translated by CAROL BROWN JANEWAY.
Reviewed by JOSEPH SALVATORE
Deserted by their enigmatic father, three brothers struggle to find themselves in Daniel Kehlmann’s tragicomedy.
‘All the Truth Is Out’
By MATT BAI
Reviewed by JACK SHAFER
Matt Bai sees the implosion of Gary Hart’s second presidential campaign as a watershed in American politics.
‘Worthy Fights’
By LEON PANETTA with JIM NEWTON
Reviewed by LESLIE H. GELB
Leslie H. Gelb reviews Leon Panetta’s memoir, which recounts a career in public service, including stints as White House chief of staff, director of the C.I.A. and defense secretary.
‘Wallflowers’
By ELIZA ROBERTSON
Reviewed by NATALIE SERBER
The stories in “Wallflowers,” Eliza Robertson’s debut collection, portray people surviving loss and heartbreak in a world full of uncanny moments.
‘Florence Gordon’
By BRIAN MORTON
Reviewed by RANDY BOYAGODA
Brian Morton’s heroine is a feisty aging feminist.
‘The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science’
By ARMAND MARIE LEROI
Reviewed by REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN
Recovering Aristotle as a scientist who explored and cataloged the Mediterranean’s natural world.
Peter Schneider’s ‘Berlin Now’ and Rory MacLean’s ‘Berlin’
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Two books about Berlin, past and present, explore its dualities of sex and violence, freedom and fascism.
‘Gay Berlin’
By ROBERT BEACHY
Reviewed by V. R. BERGHAHN
From the mid-19th century through the 1930s, gay people were at home in Berlin.
‘Lincoln and the Power of the Press’
By HAROLD HOLZER
Reviewed by DAVID S. REYNOLDS
Lincoln dealt shrewdly with the publishers and editors of politically powerful 19th-century newspapers.
‘Death of a King’
By TAVIS SMILEY with DAVID RITZ
Reviewed by CLAY RISEN
A recounting of Martin Luther King Jr.’s difficult final year.
‘The Return of George Washington: 1783-1789’
By EDWARD J. LARSON
Reviewed by DAVID WALDSTREICHER
In 1787, George Washington again rode to the nation’s rescue.
‘The Nazis Next Door’
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Reviewed by DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
How did America become a postwar haven for Nazis?
‘Village of Secrets’
By CAROLINE MOOREHEAD
Reviewed by CAROLYN J. DEAN
Resistance in a provincial French town helped save thousands.
Crime
Michael Connelly’s ‘Burning Room,’ and More
By MARILYN STASIO
In Michael Connelly’s “The Burning Room,” Harry Bosch tries to impart wisdom to his new partner.
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
PRINT & E-BOOKS
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
HARDCOVER
- Trade Fiction
- Mass-Market Fiction
- Nonfiction
PAPERBACK
As a Writer, What Influences You Other Than Books?
Thomas Mallon and James Parker discuss what influences their work — aside from other books.
And Our Fiction Special Tonight Is ...
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
“Sweetbitter,” by the 30-year-old waitress Stephanie Danler, is but one in a crop of debut novels acquired by publishers in lucrative deals.
Best Illustrated Books
The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2014, with sample artwork from each.
Books Update
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Open Book
Born to Read
By JOHN WILLIAMS
Bruce Springsteen has increasingly become the subject of popular and scholarly literature.
The Shortlist
Comic Novels
By BROCK CLARKE
New books by Julie Schumacher, Cathie Pelletier, Stuart Rojstaczer and Jonathan Coe.
Bookends
Have You Ever Had a Relationship End Because of a Book?
By ZOE HELLER and ANNA HOLMES
Zoë Heller and Anna Holmes discuss the havoc books can wreak on relationships.
Inside The New York Times Book Review Podcast
This week, Marcel Theroux discusses Michel Faber’s novel “The Book of Strange New Things”; Alexandra Alter has news from the literary world; Harold Holzer talks about “Lincoln and the Power of the Press”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
Book Review Features
Inside the List
By GREGORY COWLES
Bryan Stevenson, whose “Just Mercy” is No. 10 on the hardcover nonfiction list, says that “if we’re really committed to justice, we’ve got to do better for the poor than we’re doing.”
Warburg Institute Claims Victory After Court Ruling in Dispute With University of London
November 6, 2014
Season of Big Book Advances Includes a Reporter
November 5, 2014
A Celebration of E. B. White at Symphony Space
November 5, 2014
Bookshelf
A History Built on Culture, and Transport
By SAM ROBERTS
Three new books celebrate New York City history, culture and its subway and bus systems.
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