Ian McEwan: By the Book
The author of “Atonement” and, most recently, “Sweet Tooth,” believes the greatest reading pleasure has “an element of self-annihilation.”
The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
The author of “Atonement” and, most recently, “Sweet Tooth,” believes the greatest reading pleasure has “an element of self-annihilation.”
A new widow inherits a peculiar Pasadena estate in the final installment of Lydia Millet’s trilogy.
Richard Russo escaped small-town New York State and became a writer, but he could never escape his mother.
Politics, cartomancy and ambition collide in Karen Engelmann’s historical novel.
Duran Duran’s John Taylor on the perks and perils of being a rock star.
The determining events of the American Revolution occurred a year earlier than most people realize, Kevin Phillips argues.
A joint biography of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman traces their wide-ranging activities.
The Chinese famine of the mid-20th century is a monument to Maoist tyranny, a journalist argues.
Today’s Army, Thomas E. Ricks writes, retains manifestly incompetent generals rather than admit to failure.
In “The Black Box,” Michael Connelly’s battle-scarred veteran, Harry Bosch, settles past and present scores with a single case.
In J. Robert Lennon’s novel, a woman encounters another version of her world.
Robert Macfarlane’s contemplative walks take him from the British Isles to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas.
“Norman Bel Geddes Designs America” is a profusely illustrated career monograph that serves as the catalog for an exhibition.
“Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens” explores the lives of the writer’s offspring before and after his death.
Ayana Mathis’s debut novel is a story of terrible loss and grief and survival, of endurance in the face of disappointment, heartbreak and harrowing adversity.
Mr. Lescher’s client roster featured several distinguished authors, including Robert Frost, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alice B. Toklas, Benjamin Spock and Georgia O’Keeffe.
The political scientist James C. Scott reprises the themes of his earlier work in “Two Cheers for Anarchism.” He also loves to raise animals on his Connecticut farm.
Mr. Binelli's book "Detroit City Is the Place to Be" examines the city's deep problems and how they might be solved.
“The Tooth Mouse” is a picture book about the French version of the Tooth Fairy.
Richard Bradford’s biography is a mostly reliable guide through Martin Amis’s best novels, but lacks an instinctive feeling for their author.
Nancy Huston is honored, kind of, for passages in her novel "Infrared."
Educators say grade-school students develop reading skills better when they are engaged by characters with whom they can identify. For Hispanic children, that’s hard to find.
In “The Revolution Was Televised,” the critic Alan Sepinwall analyzes a dozen dramas — “Mad Men,” “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” among them — that he says have transformed television.
On the occasion of the first issue of The Oxford American under its new editorship, a critic hopes that the future of this Southern literary quarterly will live up to its estimable past.
In “All Gone” Alex Witchel writes about her mother’s dementia (with recipes), and in “The End of Your Life Book Club” Will Schwalbe describes what he and his mother read as she was dying of cancer.
Sudhir Venkatesh is a rising star in sociology for his research on poverty and gang life, but his methods have led to questions from colleagues and a grueling inquiry by Columbia University.
In “The Patriarch,” David Nasaw writes about Joseph P. Kennedy, a larger-than-life paterfamilias who endowed his children with a sense of destiny and his own driving will.
Mr. Queenan's new book recounts his lifetime of reading the great, the ridiculous and everything in between.
It’s been a year of remarkable novels, several of them sharing an unlikely pedigree.
To stock the ideal bathroom library, here’s a list of 11 titles from the books of 2012.
In 2012 books about the lives of acts like Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart have increased the canon of music bios and memoirs.
Fashion designers and stylists, musicians, dogs and extinct birds are all celebrated in a new crop of gift-worthy coffee table books.
Books about art, by artists and from museums, with some intriguing hybrids included.
Gift books survey, among other collections, the wealth of Saxons, ancient mosaics, Buddhist artifacts and the Book of Kells.
World War II intrigue, an audacious heist, misfits of science, an anthology of gay and lesbian comics and superheroes are on the bill in these graphic novels.
This week, a discussion of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2012; Caroline Weber talks about Duran Duran; Leslie Kaufman has notes from the field; Steven Heller on his latest Visuals column; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.
Among other things, Carol Loomis’s “Tap Dancing to Work” asks the timeless question, Are Jimmy and Warren Buffett related?
Philip Roth discussed his decision to stop writing fiction: “I knew I wasn’t going to get another good idea, or if I did, I’d have to slave over it.”
In “Exposure,” a new book, the former chief of Olympus of Japan tells how he became a whistle-blower after finding that the company was making questionable, money-losing acquisitions.
Books on former Mayor David N. Dinkins, biking in the boroughs and the evolution of mass transit in the city.
Maria Popova is the mastermind of Brain Pickings, one of the faster growing literary empires on the Internet, yet she is virtually unknown.
Bedbugs reveal a taste for literature, turning up in library books.
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