Joseph Wambaugh, the master storyteller of police dramas, whose books, films and television tales powerfully caught the hard psychic realities of lonely street cops and flawed detectives trapped in a seedy world of greed and senseless brutality, died on Friday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 88. The cause was esophageal cancer, … Read more
Access to the family piano and Mitchell’s 1972 album “For the Roses” served as gateway drugs; in high school, Lisicky started to compose his own songs, and when that proved too intimidating, shifted to writing stories without music. But the singer’s fluid singularity, her refusal to apologize or conform, made him feel electric and understood. … Read more
Welcome to the Book Review Book Club! Every month, we select a book to discuss with our readers. Last month, we read “Orbital,” by Samantha Harvey. (You can also go back and listen to our episodes on “Small Things Like These,” “James” and “Intermezzo.”) Humanity has a funny relationship with history: We never quite know … Read more
By Aaron Gwyn In Comanche folklore, the Mupitsi is a terrifying giant bird that swoops through the night, looking for naughty children to devour. But in the powerful novella THE CANNIBAL OWL (Belle Point Press, 66 pp., paperback, $15.95), it becomes a personal totem for Levi English, an 11-year-old boy who runs away from a … Read more
Marcus puts his knowledge as a historian of illustrated books for children to excellent use here. We see the Earthrise image in color on the cover, and then again in black and white as a frontispiece. Next, we encounter two similar shots: one from the Apollo 11 mission, the other snapped by an unmanned lunar … Read more
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie It’s been years since Adichie, the author of “Americanah,” released a work of fiction; now she returns with the stories of four women navigating life during the pandemic. Centered on Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer based in the United States, the story also swivels to her cousin, her best friend and … Read more
Political hot spots feature prominently in this week’s recommended books, with sobering views of conditions on the ground in Ukraine (“Looking at Women Looking at War”) and Gaza (“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”) and here in the United States, where Katherine Stewart’s “Money, Lies, and God” considers the recent rise of … Read more
Peter Elbow, an English professor whose struggles with writer’s block led him to create a new way of teaching freshman composition that emphasized free-writing exercises, personal reflection and peer feedback over rigid academic conventions that often stifled students, died on Feb. 6 in Seattle. He was 89. His wife, Cami Pelz Elbow, said the cause … Read more
With “Midnight Black,” the latest installment just out, he disclosed in an email interview the weird way he names his characters — and his love for Martin Short. SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? I am reading “Flames of Heaven,” by the criminally underappreciated thriller author Ralph Peters, probably for the fourth … Read more
MELTDOWN: Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, by Duncan Mavin A decade ago, the venerable and now defunct bank Credit Suisse brought in a new chief executive, Tidjane Thiam, who naturally bought himself a house on Zurich’s “Gold Coast.” A few months later, Thiam found that he had a new neighbor — his … Read more