Book Review: The Great Sperm Whale
/Prolific author Richard Ellis returns with a gripping new book about the monster from Melville, the mysterious and majestic sperm whale.
Read MoreBook Review: The Social Animal
/David Brooks' new book presents us with Harold and Erica, two characters who are meant to represent the way we live now. The results are quasi-fictional, at best.
Read MoreBook Review: The Queen's Rival
/A novel about the woman who came heart-breakingly close to founding a new Tudor dynasty.
Read MoreBook Review: Dance of the Furies
/A provocative and fascinating new book challenges what we think we know about the causes and nature of the First World War.
Read MoreBook Review: Boswell's London Journal
/In his early 20s, James Boswell kept a journal of his riotous, entertaining life in London, and it's now in an updated version from Penguin Classics.
Read MoreBook Review: Wolfsangel
/Norse saga and werewolf yarn combine in the debut of a fast-paced, smart, and violent new fantasy series.
Read MoreBook Review: Government in the Clouds
/The rabble-rousing jeremiad is alive and well in the self-publishing world, as this new anti-politician broadside demonstrates!
Read MoreBook Review: The Scar-Crow Men
/The dashing, omni-competent Will Swyfte returns to swash some further buckles in Mark Chadbourn's new alternate-history fantasy novel.
Read MoreMary Chesnut's Diary
/The famous Civil War diarist, whose eloquent pessimism was given voice in Ken Burns's "The Civil War", receives a much-needed repackaging by Penguin Classics
Read MoreThe Tudor Secret, by C.W. Gortner
/C.W. Gortner kicks off his potboiling Tudor chronicles with a fast-paced novel of conspiracy (and, of course, shrouded paternity) in the court of Edward VI
Read MoreReview of It's Superman!, by Tom De Haven
/A favorite from the thriving genre of fiction based on the Man of Steel is reissued by Ballantine Books
Read MoreA Novelist in Tahrir Square
/It's fitting that Ahdaf Soueif is narrating this exciting new chapter in Egypt's history: for decades she has offered her readers richer, more complicated stories of the Middle East than the commonplace ones of submission and extremism.
Read MoreLast Days of the Rough Rider
/Theodore Roosevelt left office younger than any American president before him, and renowned biographer Edmund Morris concludes his TR trilogy with a look at the Colonel's post-power days.
Read MoreOn the Scent: The Naturals
/It seems a given that natural scents would be preferable to synthetics, but might it be that our our perfume biases are too simplistic?
Read MoreThe Wanderer
/The protagonist of Teju Cole's "Open City" roams New York, gathering and subtly processing observations; Andrew Martin trails this enigmatic walker in the city.
Read MorePrince Eddy and the Blackguards
/When the heir presumptive, Prince Eddy, died suddenly, the nation and empire was convulsed with mourning - and a century of speculation began! Had the lost prince been a simpleton, a saint, a catamite - even Jack the Ripper?
Read MoreI Is Someone Else
/Death-in-a-Box meditates on sameness, doubling, and identity’s dissolve. So who is this Alta Ifland? And what sets her apart?
Read MoreTaxonomy and Grace
/Have bickering bloggers and academic jargon so infected the poetry world that readers can no longer read a poem, or speak of one, as what it is?
Read Morefrom "8 Equations"
/Pi Burned AlphabeticsAtomic Snowstorms in Left Handed Corners of the MindCircumference of Infinity & Where it Has Gotten Us
Read MoreMad, Vlad, and Dangerous to Know
/Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is the epitome of lurking evil -- but two recent novels do their best to unearth the smoldering bad-boy behind the murderous facade. So: Was Mina Harker smitten before she was bitten?
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