November 2010 Issue
/from "Study (St. Eustace)" by Sarah Goldstein
Read MoreA Day Such as This
/The Battle of the Somme has become a watch-word for useless slaughter over worthless ground, but a new book contends that the Somme was actually a victory for the good guys--a ghastly, horrifying victory, but a victory just the same.
Read MoreThe Purposes of Creation
/As reproductive technology has become more advanced, the value of those engineered lives has become more complicated. Two recent novels provide a striking perspective on this growing conflict.
Read MoreThree Fables
/Feral cats caught in traps, blood on canvas, mice in laundry baskets, passerines, tail feathers, sky without color.
Read MoreFairytales in Fragments
/"I want to escape within the work. Or maybe it's just that that's the world of the childhood fairy tales, carrying over into my adult creations?"
Read MoreA Book Every King Should Read
/George R. R. Martin's epic "Song of Fire and Ice" has sold millions of copies and is about to be a new HBO production. A timely appreciation gives you some idea of what all the fuss is about.
Read MoreGeorge Eliot for Dummies
/Free thinker, strong-minded woman, scholar, lover, novelist: George Eliot lived a courageous life that should be known and celebrated. But does Brenda Maddox's biography do it justice?
Read MoreRhyme and Rylance
/David Hirson's 'La Bête' is a sophisticated comedy set in 17th century France and composed entirely of rhyming couplets - not exactly standard Broadway stuff when it premiered twenty years ago. Does the new Matthew Warchus/Mark Rylance revival fare any better today?
Read MoreArt Beneath the Floorboards
/Dostoevsky's moody, brilliant "Notes from the Underground" was recently given an edgy, provocative theater treatment. Can Russia's most unfilmable writer be acted on the stage?
Read MoreA Year with Short Novels: Of Dogs & Men
/J. R. Ackerley's complex and marvelous novella "We Think the World of You"--in which two lonely, repressed people contend for the affections of a glorious dog--is the next work featured in "A Year with Short Novels."
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “There’s nothing, nothing on earth as dumb as a teenage boy”
/Dennis Tafoya’s second crime novel, "The Wolves of Fairmount Park," confirms that he is a brilliant new voice with a finely tuned modern noir sensibility.
Read MoreSee Hear!: Quincy and the Count
/A bandleader must be a tireless multitasker who can unite a large group of musicians while satisfying the egos of soloists; two of the greatest are featured here
Read More“Someone New to Love”
/A teacher seduced by the fame of his star pupil? Or two great minds meeting despite differences in age and station? Annabel Lyon's celebrated new novel "The Golden Mean" dramatizes the relationship between Aristotle and the boy who would go on to become Alexander the Great.
Read MoreThe Lion Saves His Pride
/Winston Churchill has become such an icon of wartime tenacity that many people tend to forget he had a postwar political career. Barbara Leaming's 2010 biography examines the last act of a famous man's career.
Read MoreUnlies His Mother Told Him
/Emma Donoghue's story of a boy raised in perfect (if penitential) solitude with his mother and then thrust into the wide world is parable about the isolation of affection--or is it a commentary on how alien our society has become?
Read More…then we are “jingoes”
/A new book argues that Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst stampeded the United States into the Spanish-American War to feed imperial ambition and sell some newspapers. Are the roots of modern America rotten?
Read MoreKeeping Up with the Romans: The Phenomenon of Her
/She's one of the most famous names in history, and the only figure in antiquity to rival Julius Caesar's renown--but what do we really know about Cleopatra? Stacy Schiff's biography takes us behind the legend.
Read More"Perception at the Pitch of Passion"
/A catch-all collection of James Baldwin's essays, letters, and speeches reveals a social commenter whose observations retain their relevance and universality to this day
Read MoreIt's... James Franco!
/Hollywood heartthrob James Franco follows a different Muse and delivers his debut collection of short stories. You're just a bit curious, aren't you?
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