What Jona Knew
/It’s comforting to believe there are lessons to be learned from the Holocaust, or to treat it as a story about the triumph of the human spirit. Jona Oberski’s Childhood rightly refuses us these consolations.
Read MorePlying the Darkness
/Brian Turner’s complex, lyrical meditations on his tour of duty in Iraq make us ache with the privilege that is a war memoir.
Read MoreIndependence Day
/Two recent votes on independence remind us that globalization has not put an end to nationalism. A new book on the 1995 Quebec referendum highlights just how complicated a people’s “yes” or “no” votes really are.
Read MoreHarm Him, Harm Me
/Historical novelist Andrew Levkoff stuffs the last installment of his "Bow of Heaven" trilogy with battles, love, loyalty betrayed, crucifixion, cross-purposes, loyalty regained, and deep reflections on what it all means.
Read MoreEnlisted Again
/Once he'd led the Continental Army to victory, General George Washington retired to his Mount Vernon home - but the newborn country wasn't done with him yet. A new book looks at First Citizen Washington.
Read MorePointez, Pointez!
/Hugely talented biographer Andrew Roberts has written a big biography of Napoleon Bonaparte - but when it comes to such a well-known figure, are readers in danger of fatigue de bataille?
Read MoreUnwise Counsel
/Leon Panetta, old Washington fixture and former member of the Obama administration, criticizes the president in his new memoir. But does he have anything to say?
Read More#NotAllNazis
/What would you do if your artistic survival suddenly depended on the whims of a brutal dictatorship? How far would you compromise? How much would you risk? A new book studies artists in the Third Reich.
Read MoreNot What Isaiah Had in Mind
/Can a book about the Jewish Diaspora add anything useful on the topic if it's uninterested in Jewish history and slightly dodgy about the Diaspora? Jordan MaGill gives Alan Wolfe's At Home in Exile a close reading.
Read More“He hit the Constitution much as the Lord hit chaos…”
/There were layers and layers to John Marshall, one of America's first and in many ways most important Chief Justices of the Supreme Court - but just how deep does the latest biography go?
Read MoreThinking in Common
/The great critic and essayist Irving Howe laid claim to a great many decayed traditions - and then elevated them all to high art. A new collection of his prose presents some of his gems.
Read MoreTitle Menu: A list of great political books that doesn't include What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer
/Just in time for the November midterm elections, we do what doubters said couldn't be done: we present you with a list of ten great political books that doesn't include Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes.
Read MoreThe Book of Abraham
/Veteran historian Brookhiser takes a look at the formative influences on Abraham Lincoln - not so much his own father as the Founding Fathers.
Read MoreCoalition of the Chilling
/A British historian's richly-sourced accounting of Molotov-Ribbentrop offers fresh insights into this Nazi-Soviet pact of "non-aggression."
Read MoreHidden in Plain Sight
/A new book blames Pakistan for the carnage in Afghanistan. But what does "Pakistan" really mean when its government is so fraught with dissension?
Read MoreThe Lion's Den
/We think of the Middle East as a place of hopeless deadlocks - but once upon a time, an Egyptian president, an Israeli prime minister, and a U.S. president worked for two weeks to hammer out a plan for peace. Lawrence Wright takes readers to Camp David at a turning point in history.
Read MoreWords Plucked from Our Tongues
/Can Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda heal Canada’s colonial relationship with its First Nations? Why should we expect literature to succeed where our leaders have failed?
Read MoreThe Done Thing
/England had been at war with France almost continuously since the Norman Conquest, but in the Hundred Years War, the conflict became especially heightened - and transformative. A new history tells the story as a rattling good yarn.
Read MoreHigh and Outside
/Uncertain Justice, by Lawrence Tribe and Joshua Matz, suggests that personality plays a greater role than ideology in today's Supreme Court. David Culberg assesses the arguments.
Read MoreThe Grey Zone
/Gertrude van Tijn helped more than 20,000 Jews escape occupied Holland. What does it mean that, in saving their lives, she had to collaborate with Nazis?
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