by Tom Spencer Sometimes you know immediately that a book is going to get under your skin and stay there. I felt that way only a few pages into Spencer’s tart debut, THE MYSTERY OF THE CROOKED MAN (Pushkin Vertigo, 319 pp., paperback, $18.95), which vaults the reader into the world of Agatha Dorn, an … Read more
When I was young and couldn’t sleep, I’d count the people I’d kissed. Now that I’m, well, a little less young, I count the people I can call a friend. Both lists give me happiness. But I’d argue the second list gives me life. The assessment that friends give life is not hyperbole. In “The … Read more
As a child growing up in Zimbabwe, Peter Godwin saw neighbors murdered by guerrillas during the civil war that broke out during the fight for independence from Britain. Before he turned 18, he was conscripted into the army. Later, he wrote about conflicts from South Africa to Bosnia to Ukraine, practiced human rights law and … Read more
Medieval scribes filled volumes called bestiaries with illustrations and descriptions of fantastic creatures. The manuscripts containing representations of these animals also depended on a menagerie of beasts: The covers of these and other volumes were fashioned from the skins of calves, goats, sheep, deer, pigs and, in some macabre instances, humans. Most of these hides … Read more
Robert W. McChesney, an influential left-leaning media critic who argued that corporate ownership was bad for American journalism and that Silicon Valley billionaires who dominated online information were a threat to democracy, died on March 25, at his home in Madison, Wis. He was 72. The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, his wife, … Read more
A satire of expatriate life in trendy Berlin, a tale of an antiquarian book dealer stuck in a time loop, and a fictionalized retelling of a migrant boat tragedy in the English Channel, are among the six titles that will compete for this year’s International Booker Prize, the award’s organizers announced on Tuesday. Perhaps the … Read more
THE GRIFFIN SISTERS’ GREATEST HITS, by Jennifer Weiner Twenty years ago, the music industry was still fairly flush. There were big budgets for videos, wardrobe and the wooing of press and radio programmers. Stars were made on the road and cemented their followings via monoliths like MTV’s “Total Request Live.” It’s an era Jennifer Weiner … Read more
SLAYERS, EVERY ONE OF US: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On, by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs “The story you most often hear about divorce, about heartbreak, is the story of an ending. A light switch flicked into the Off position,” writes Jenny Owen Youngs in “Slayers, … Read more
Elaine Pagels, the best-selling author and Princeton professor, explains her interest in the life of Jesus in much the same terms. She opens her new book, “Miracles and Wonder,” with an account of her youthful dissatisfaction with the milquetoast Methodism of her suburban-California youth, with the more richly sacramental yet dourly punitive Catholicism and, finally, … Read more
