December 2010 Issue
/"Greenhouse Post" by J. Robert Lennon
Read MoreThe Prodigal Brothers
/Ever since Cain and Abel, literature has reserved a prominent place for sterling heroes -- and the flawed, grasping, and entirely more interesting brothers who live in their shadow.
Read MoreSee Hear! Erroll Garner and Bill Evans - Two Views of a Trio
/Once they had established a repertoire and following, jazz pianists could tour as single artists, adding bassists and drummers from venue to venue. Brad Jones explores the styles of two of the greatest.
Read MoreA Different Sort of Englishness
/John le Carré not only has a new novel -- all his old ones are being inducted into the pantheon of UK Penguin Classics. Has this indefatigable crafter of spy novels transformed into the litterateur in our lifetime?
Read MoreSimple Man
/No American president in a generation has so polarized the country as George W. Bush, and his new book will almost certainly polarize its readers. Is it defiant agitprop or heartfelt memoir?
Read MoreOn the Scent: Auteur Theory
/The great lie of the perfume industry is that the scents you wear are created by the designers that brand them. In fact perfumers with signature styles are behind those scents, and Elisa Gabbert gives them some overdue recognition.
Read MoreA Year with Short Novels: True Grit & Greatness
/Charles Portis's "True Grit" features a young girl who's all business and a grizzled gunslinger who's all heart -- but there's far more complexity and humor to the story than the Hollywood pairing implies. Ingrid Norton looks at a great American novella.
Read MoreThe Tao of Steve
/For their wit and challenge, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics have virtually come to symbolize our modern musical theater. A new collection gathers the lyrics to all those maddening, memorable songs, and adds to them with Sondheim's own comments.
Read MoreThere Are Heroes, and You Aren't One of Them
/A gutted world, a shattered helmet, a battle lost before you ever joined it ... in "Halo: Reach," the franchise delves into the mythology underpinning all heroic narrative, and still manages to deliver some fun.
Read More"An Unerring Eye for the Charmless"
/"Ultimately I'm not trying to say much with most of my photography, or my writing either. I am just trying to capture things that interest me, often for very obscure reasons."
Read MoreBluebeard in Japan
/In Yoko Ogawa's beautiful, violent take on the Bluebeard legend, a stern old man and a biddable girl meet in a hotel and embark on a sexual journey of surprising poignancy.
Read MoreEdwin S. Porter’s Execution of Czolgosz (1901)
/prussian blue, grog-blossom /brown, but the prison matron’s white /picture-hat withered /the angels to specular. Even now /
Read MoreTemporarily Miracle-Sodden
/The most Bellovian figure of all may have been the man who lent us the term. A new collection of Saul Bellow's letters present the man in all his exuberant passion and thorny short-temper.
Read MoreMisfiring the Canon
/Of the charismatic Yale lecturer one adoring student wrote, "Charles Hill is God," and in his new book, Hill moves in mysterious ways. He claims that statecraft and the Western canon are inextricably linked -- but there are doubters in the temple.
Read MoreGoing Back to the Well
/In his latest book, Stephen King works in extremely familiar territory -- ordinary people presented with extraordinary moral choices, with a dash of the eerie thrown in. Do an old hand's usual tricks still entertain?
Read MoreThe Platypus
/For more than fifty years and more than fifty novels, Louis Auchincloss chronicled the lives of New York's upper class. His last book is a memoir of his life among that upper class -- but is truth stranger than fiction?
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