jueves, 9 de junio de 2011

Book Review


An online supplement to the Book Review’s June 5 special issue.

Visuals

A roundup of new art and design books, about screen printing, graffiti lettering, signage in South African townships and pavement chalk artists.

Comics

A roundup of new comics collections and graphic novels on grown-up themes.

‘The Influencing Machine’

A media manifesto from N.P.R.’s Brooke Gladstone, delivered in comics form.
ARTSBEAT BLOG

What the Book Review Is Reading This Summer

From whale tales to political writing to Parisian escapes, editors of the Book Review weigh in on their summer-reading lists.
Book News and Reviews
Patrick French
Jerry Bauer
Patrick French
BOOKS OF THE TIMES

‘India: A Portrait’

In “India: A Portrait,” a new biography of a sort, Patrick French tries to get his arms around the size and import of this teeming country.
AT HOME WITH TOM MCNEAL

An Imagination With Built-Ins

Tom McNeal’s new novel, “To Be Sung Under Water,” took shape at his home overlooking an orange grove in Southern California.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Roberto Bolaño

‘Between Parentheses’

The excellent thing about “Between Parentheses, ” a collection of Roberto Bolaño’s nonfiction, is how thoroughly it dispels any incense or stale reverence in the air.
YOUNG ADULT

‘Anya’s Ghost’

A graphic novel about a teenage girl and her friend Emily, a 100-something-year-old ghost who died 90 years earlier.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Mark Seal

‘The Man in the Rockefeller Suit’

How a 17-year-old immigrant came to America and assumed a succession of identities, eventually passing himself off as one Clark Rockefeller.
MOTHERLODE BLOG

Introducing the Motherlode Book Club

Starting off a conversation about parenting books with “TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood.”
Martha Roth, dean of humanities at the University of Chicago, and Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute there.

After 90 Years, a Dictionary of an Ancient World

Scholars at the University of Chicago have completed a project that includes 28,000 words from ancient Mesopotamia, covering a period from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 100.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Ron Hansen

‘A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion’

In “A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion” Ron Hansen delves into the real-life case of a wife who coaxed her lover into killing her husband for insurance money.
BOOKSHELF

Views of New York, From Past to Present

Stories handed down from father to son, a love letter to the dogs of New York, and guides to the city, sincere and snide.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Bill James

‘Popular Crime’

Bill James, known for his analysis of baseball statistics, tackles data pertaining to well-known murders.
NOTICED
IN PRINT Kourtney Kardashian, left, Nicole Polizzi and Lauren Conrad are among a collection of celebrites with book deals.

In Their Own Words? Maybe

There is an understanding among publishers, editors and agents that ghostwriters are behind many novels by celebrities.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Ann Patchett

‘State of Wonder’

In Ann Patchett’s new novel, a research scientist goes outside her comfort zone, to the Amazon jungle, to help solve the mystery of a colleague’s death.
Q&A
Philip Connors spends his summers looking for fires in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico.

A Fire Lookout on Solitude (and Lots of Time to Read)

Philip Connors, the author of “Fire Season,” spends his summers living in a remote cabin in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, where he is on the lookout for fires.
AT HOME WITH KELLY COYNE AND ERIK KNUTZEN
Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne (with flax harvest) at their home.

Living Large, Off the Land

Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen gave up a long commute to promote a do-it-yourself revolution from their home in Los Angeles.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
John Donohue

‘Man With a Pan’

John Donohue has assembled a collection of essays and recipes by men who love cooking.
Georgina Bloomberg, left, on Inauguration Day 2010 as Mayor Bloomberg took the oath of office for his third term.

In Novel by Mayor’s Daughter, Hints of Family Life

Georgina Bloomberg’s new book, “The A Circuit,” is about a family headed by a blunt-talking Wall Street billionaire who lives in a Manhattan town house and “owns half of New York.”
A cinnamon sugar cake doughnut, to rival a traditional one.

Gluten-Free: Flavor-Free No More

A slew of cookbooks have been published to help bakers navigate a gluten-free kitchen.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Haley Tanner

‘Vaclav & Lena’

Haley Tanner’s “Vaclav & Lena” is a story of two Russian immigrants who first meet at age 6 in an English as a Second Language class at their Brooklyn school.
BOOKS

Broad Brushstrokes Obscure a View of Brain Trauma

In this tripartite story of brain, art and family life, the author aces the first part but comes up surprisingly short in the other two.

Five Poets Seasoned by Life

New poetry by Dean Young, Dorianne Laux , Jim Moore, Tom Sexton and Laura Kasischke.
Sunday Book Review

Summer Reading

Illustration by Frank Viva

Cookbooks

More than a dozen new cookbooks, full of fantasy, truth, good meals and bad.

Gardening Books

A bumper crop of new gardening books that make a good case for the simple joy of growing things.

Travel Books

In this season’s travel books, the most resonant journeys are recorded by writers who hit the road to escape failed relationships, broken marriages and dead-end careers.
Summer Reading: Music
Bob Dylan in 1965.
Don Hunstein
Bob Dylan in 1965.

Books About Bob Dylan

New books by Greil Marcus, David Yaffe and Daniel Mark Epstein reaffirm Bob Dylan’s enduring ability to captivate.

Biographies of Metallica and Queen

The life and times of Metallica and Queen, two of the world’s biggest, loudest and most emotionally complicated rock groups.

‘Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music’

Rob Young traces the pastoral roots of Britain’s folk music scene of the 1960s and ’70s.
Summer Reading: Hollywood
Robert Redford in 1975.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Robert Redford in 1975.

‘Robert Redford’

A meticulous, tiptoeingly respectful biography of Robert Redford: actor, director and environmental activist.

Show Business Memoirs

Memoirs by Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Eden recall a pioneering era of television comedy.

‘Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant’

Cary Grant’s daughter celebrates their relationship.

‘Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob (and Sex)’

Paramount Pictures as seen from on high when the American new wave came in.
Summer Reading: Fiction

‘Sister’

In this novel, a free-spirited sister’s death — perhaps it was murder — forces a highly conventional woman to examine the truth of their relationship.
China Miéville

‘Embassytown’

On a distant planet, humans introduce the natives to a destructive habit — lying.

‘The Devil’s Light’

In Richard North Patterson’s new thriller, Al Qaeda plans to set off a nuclear bomb on Sept. 11, 2011.

‘22 Britannia Road’

In this first novel, a couple shattered by World War II struggle to start anew.
Sarah Winman

‘When God Was a Rabbit’

This darkly comic novel’s child heroine quotes Nietzsche at the dinner table and names her pet rabbit “God.”

‘Someday This Will Be Funny’

Lynne Tillman experiments with narrative form in these innovative stories.
OneFiveFourBy Lebbeus Woods.Unpaged. Princeton Architectural Press. $24.95.“Geometry and light are the essential elements of my work in architecture,” Woods declares, introducing this book of his projects from 1985 to the present, with a combination of text, drawings, models, and numerical and geometrical figures.

Science Fiction Chronicle

Speculative fiction by Lauren Beukes, Genevieve Valentine, Peter S. Beagle and Jo Walton.
Summer Reading: Travel & Adventure
Surveying during the Terra Nova expedition.

‘An Empire of Ice’

In time for the 100th anniversary of the conquest of the South Pole, a history of Antarctic exploration through the lens of science.

‘Wanderlust: A Love Affair With Five Continents’

For this traveler, each new place is more mirage than reality.
Margaret Hastings and New Guinea tribesmen.

‘Lost in Shangri-La’

How three World War II sightseers survived a crash in remote New Guinea.
The map by Nicolò Zen the Younger, published by Francesco Marcolini in 1558.

‘Irresistible North’

Andrea di Robilant’s discovery of an antique travel book sends him on a journey of his own.
Alexander von Humboldt and the botanist Aimé Bonpland at the foot of the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador.

‘Andes’

A somewhat unlikely adventurer describes his trek down South America’s great mountain range to its icy finish in Patagonia.

‘The Tao of Travel’

Paul Theroux’s literary travel volume cites passages from his favorite authors.
Summer Reading: Sport
Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium, June 22, 1938.

‘At the Fights’

Essays on boxing by A. J. Liebling, Richard Wright, Joyce Carol Oates, Gay Talese and others survey a world of extreme risk and unique nobility.

‘It’s All About the Bike’

The cyclist Robert Penn sets out to assemble a “talismanic machine.”
Summer Reading: Baseball

‘The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter’

This biography of the Yankees’ shortstop has only good things to say about him.
Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio at Yankee Stadium, September 1939.

Biographies of Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg

Short biographies of Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg, two of the most feared hitters in baseball.
Stan Musial’s 3,000th hit, May 13, 1958.

‘Stan Musial: An American Life’

A biography of Stan Musial, one of baseball’s great hitters who nonetheless kept a low profile.
REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK:An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Boston Red Sox.By Harvey Frommer.237 pp. Stewart, Tabori & Chang. $45.A hundred years of Green Monster visions and lore in a chorus of voices, starting with the opening game in 1912, six days after the Titanic went down, and proceeding decade by decade with the Babe, the curse, Williams and Yaz, the heartbreak of '86 and World Series redemption.

Baseball Chronicle

A grudge-bearing memoir by Bill White; accounts of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak and a 19th-century manager’s back-to-back pennant wins; and a retired ballplayer’s Zen-inspired meditation on the game.
Summer Reading: Comics
Horsefeathers: Billy DeBeck's “Barney Google,” in “The Comics” (Dec. 26, 1920).

‘The Comics: The Complete Collection’

An illustrated history of American newspaper comics, from the Yellow Kid to Dilbert.
Summer Reading: Food

Books About Lobster

Two short books on lobster, the food and the creature.

Book Review Back Page
SKETCHBOOK | AMY GOLDWASSER AND PETER ARKLE
The Books We Read Outdoors
On a recent partly sunny Sunday afternoon on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, we asked some outdoor readers to give their ground-level book reviews.

Book Review Podcast

Featuring Sam Sifton on new cookbooks and Dominique Browning on new books about gardening.
  •  This Week's Book Review Podcast (mp3)
Paul Theroux, right, lovingly inscribed one of his novels for V. S. Naipaul. It was put up for sale, sparking a 15-year feud. It ended last weekend with a handshake at a book festival in Wales.

In Book Circles, a Taming of the Feud

One of the last old-school literary dust-ups passed into history last week. Can Twitter feuds fill the void of swinging fists?
Children’s Books

‘Blackout’

A Brooklyn family experiences a blackout in this picture book.

‘The Absolute Value of Mike’

In this middle grade novel, a boy becomes aware of his father’s strengths, and his own, while spending the summer with relatives.

‘Blood Red Road’

In this debut young adult novel, a girl searches for her brother in a postapocalyptic world.

‘Far From Shore’

A field biologist and ornithologist’s illustrated journal of a four-month scientific voyage on the Pacific Ocean.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Bookshelf: Growing Up
Reviews of new picture books.
Summer Reading: Crime

‘Popular Crime’

A baseball statistician turns to his other passion: true crime cases, from Lizzie Borden to JonBenet Ramsey.
Violette Nozière in custody, September 1933.

‘Violette Nozière: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris’

A lurid murder case from the 1930s sheds light on a time of social change in France.
CRIME

Ghostbusters

Mystery novels by Michael Koryta, Justin Evans, Jason Starr and Sara Gran.
The Times's Critics
Recent reviews by:
Business
OFF THE SHELF

Fresh Tomatoes for Inner Cities

In “Fair Food,” a new book, Oren B. Hesterman suggests fixes for what he sees as a broken American food system.
Arts & Leisure
Picasso's “Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery),” which was once owned by Gertrude Stein.

Modern Is Modern Is ...

San Francisco exhibitions a block apart explore Gertrude Stein as an art collector and as half of a public gay union.
Autos
BOOKS

The Books of Summer, Awaiting Your Armchair

There is good automotive reading for the summer out there, and while the books may be too hefty for the beach, they are certainly good for the front porch.
Obituaries
Josephine Hart

Josephine Hart, Author of Best-Selling ‘Damage,’ Dies

“Damage,” Ms. Hart’s first novel, told the story of a powerful, married member of Parliament who embarks on an ultimately disastrous affair with his son’s fiancée.
Johanna Fiedler

Johanna Fiedler Dies at 65; Wrote of the Met Opera

Ms. Fiedler wrote tell-all books about the Metropolitan Opera and about her father, Arthur Fiedler.
Hans Keilson photographed in the Netherlands in 2010.

Hans Keilson, Novelist of Life in Nazi-Run Europe, Dies at 101

Mr. Keilson, a German-born psychoanalyst, won literary fame at the end of his long life when his long-forgotten stories, set in Nazi-occupied Europe, were republished to great acclaim.
Book Review Features

Up Front: Sam Sifton

In the age of Google, it’s not that hard to find a photograph of of The Times’s restaurant critic — but we’re not about to make Sam Sifton’s day job any more difficult by printing one here.
TBR
Steve Berry

Inside the List

Beach-reading season may be in full swing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot of constitutional law being debated on the best-seller list.

Editors’ Choice

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Paperback Row

Paperback books of particular interest.

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