'The Lacuna'
By BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Reviewed by LIESL SCHILLINGER
This novel, about a boy’s consequential bonds with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, is a call to conscience and connection.
When an enormous transparent dome settles over a small town in Maine in Stephen King’s new novel, it’s just fine with Big Jim, the local tyrant-in-waiting, and his pet goon squad.
A valuable new biography of Samuel Johnson, the most eminent of all literary critics.
This novel, about a boy’s consequential bonds with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, is a call to conscience and connection.
Amy Gerstler’s poems — skillful in every kind of comedy, yet deeply serious — show a fondness for animals without sentimentalizing them.
An argument that can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating force that bears little relation to genuine happiness.
This official biography chronicles the parties, the games, the trips, the charitable causes — and the trouble thanks to Edward VIII.
John Irving’s new novel follows a father and son through 50 years in “a world of accidents.”
A wonderfully intelligent and frank memoir about the Mennonite upbringing Rhoda Janzen returned to following an emotional and physical crisis.
A life of Robert Altman, told in interviews with nearly 200 of his friends, colleagues and family members.
A guide to using game theory to divine and shape the future, based on the premise that people do what’s best for them.
An American climber recounts some of the most dramatic attempts on the peak of K2.
A candid memoir from the multitalented wrestler Hulk Hogan.
“A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy,” a new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, includes many personal letters and early manuscripts by the author.
Mary Karr’s searing new memoir of alcoholism and recovery is every bit as absorbing as her devastating 1995 memoir, “The Liars’ Club,” which secured her place on the literary map.
Publishers Weekly's choices for top books of the year has drawn protests from a women's literary group, which notes that there are no female writers on the list.
In 1978 I made my first reporting trip to the Brazilian Amazon, with an orange-and-white Penguin paperback edition of “Tristes Tropiques” as the only book squeezed into my gear.
The outspoken media darling of populist conservatism uses the plots of the novels as a springboard for issues.
Michael Specter’s hotly argued diatribe targets those he thinks are emblems of stubbornly anti-scientific thinking, like Prince Charles, Dr. Andrew Weil and Whole Foods.
Mr. Ayala was an eminent Spanish novelist whose work explored societies in which there is much despotism and little benevolence.
Most of Alexis de Tocqueville’s letters home from America have never been published in English. But Frederick Brown has translated them for a volume due out next year.
Mme. Chiang Kai-shek led a long, vastly complicated life, one that is richly detailed in Hannah Pakula’s long, vastly complicated new biography.
Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe and The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg offer readers a chance to relive the long, winding road to victory.
The French writer Marie NDiaye won France’s Prix Goncourt on Monday for “Three Strong Women,” her tale of the struggles of women in Europe and Africa.
Mr. Grisham took seven of his unused plot ideas and turned each of them into a sharp, lean tale free of subplots and padding.
E-mail and cellphone novels may be making the language easier — even for the Japanese.
Novels by Mattox Roesch, Nick Cave, H. M. Naqvi and Sam Savage.
If Joseph Papp had had his way, “Free for All,” Kenneth Turan’s newly published oral history of Papp and the Public Theater he helped found, would never have seen the light of day.
A special look at our fall children’s books issue with Adam Gopnik, Julie Just and Ryan Southerland.
The Times’s Dave Itzkoff talks with Hulk Hogan about his new book and his life in wrestling.
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Mr. Lévi-Strauss, a towering intellectual, transformed the West’s understanding of what was once called “primitive man.”
Todd Strasser of Larchmont often uses fictionalized versions of nearby towns and schools in his novels for children and young adults.
David Finkel talks about his book, "The Good Soldiers," based on eight months in Iraq with a battalion sent as part of the surge.
Since it came out in February, “The Help” has been embraced by book clubs and bloggers who can’t stop recommending it to their friends.
It’s immediately apparent just flipping through “Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America’s Finest News Source,” that the art of the fake headline has evolved.
Hulk Hogan’s memoir enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Another former grappler, John Irving, hits the fiction list at No. 4. Do I smell a matchup?
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