A Period of Most Powerful Transition
/In his world-ranging new popular history Heyday, Ben Wilson looks at the Great Exhibition of 1851 as a focal point of the 19th-century grand dream of commerce and culture. Zach Rabiroff reviews.
Read MoreAtomic Turquoise Bat Mitzvah
/A startling alien legacy is dug up out of the ground in Sylvain Neuvel's stellar debut novel Sleeping Giants. Justin Hickey reviews.
Read MoreChange the Way They Live
/As Andrew Bacevich relates in his important new book, US involvement in the Middle East has been characterized by confusion, mistakes, and blundering military force. Greg Waldmann reviews America's War for the Greater Middle East.
Read Morefrom To Duration
/a poem, translated by Scott Abbott
Read More'Yes, Yes, Yes!'
/To be immortalized by Shakespeare is often also to be caricatured by him; a sumptuous new biography of King Henry IV admirably brings its royal subject out of the Bard's shadow.
Read MoreSimulacrum
/The intense problematics of Don DeLillo's literary preoccupations are on full display in his latest, Zero K. Dan Green explores the legacy of an author's postmodernism.
Read MoreEXISTENTIAL REPTILE REVERIE
/a poem
Read MoreSecond Glance: Njal’s Saga
/Njal's Saga is a myth based on history, a narrative about the effect of religion on a culture of revenge. Matt Ray takes us to medieval Iceland.
Read MoreFrom Some Mountain Summit High in the Air: Lord Acton and History
/History remembers him as the author of the famous dictum about power corrupting, but Lord Acton led an intense and fascinating life. Luciano Mangiafico tells his story.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “Folly is like regret, it knows no limits”
/Old loyalties lead to explosive new dangers in two new mystery-thrillers set in North Carolina and Northern Ireland.
Read MoreAnswer in Paradox
/An intimate new biography gives us a Charlotte Brontë for our times - and raises questions about the entanglement of life and art.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Mahler: 3rd symphony
/Mahler's Third is a challenge of both organization and interpretation. Does Jaap van Zweeden's new live recording deserve a place among the greats?
Read MoreBook Review: Running with Rhinos
/The heroic efforts to save the lives of the black rhinos of Zimbabwe are at the heart of a thrilling new book
Read MoreJenny Diski
/Jenny Diski
Read MoreBook Review: The Habsburg Empire: A New History
/A new history takes a thought-provokingly centralist look at the oft-chronicled Habsburg Empire
Read MoreBook Review: Dear Princess Grace, Dear Betty
/A noted feminist social critic looks back on her long friendship with the great Betty Friedan.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - DG: The Mono Era
/The DG represented in this massive box of rarities is a label under post-War reconstruction, fascinating in its rigour and frugality.
Read MoreBook Review: The President's Book of Secrets
/A fascinating new book presents readers with a bounty of stories surrounding the daily intelligence-services briefing given to US Presidents
Read MoreBook Review: History and Presence
/An invigorating new study of the real presence of the divine in the mundane workings of organized religion
Read MoreBook Review: Waiting for the Past
/The latest volume from deceptively erudite Australian poet Les Murray
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