Book News and Reviews
Kathleen Ballard Photography
Thor Hanson
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle’
By THOR HANSON
Reviewed by AMANDA KATZ
The biologist Thor Hanson assembles an overview of the structural marvel that is the feather.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Picture Books About Farm Animals
Reviewed by PAMELA PAUL
“Farmyard Beat” and “Moo, Moo, Brown Cow, Have You Any Milk” invite young readers to sing along.
A Raw Voice of Young Manhood Makes a Bid for Literary Respect
By NICOLE LaPORTE
In his third novel, Chad Kultgen tries to be “something more substantial.”
The Girl Who Cast a Viking Spell
By CHARLES McGRATH
The longtime companion of Stieg Larsson, the posthumously best-selling author of the Millennium trilogy, has resorted to unusual means to win control of Larsson’s literary legacy.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Effie’
Reviewed by CHARLES McGRATH
A biography of Effie Gray, whose marriage to the Victorian critic John Ruskin notoriously ran aground.
Come Meet the Author, but Open Your Wallet
By JULIE BOSMAN and MATT RICHTEL
To increase revenue, independent bookstores are charging for author events.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Ladies and Gentlemen: Stories’
By ADAM ROSS
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
This collection of stories by Adam Ross underscores the same dark view of human relationships that animated his debut novel, “Mr. Peanut.”
BOOKS
A Feat of Engineering That Doubles as a Home
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
“Avian Architecture” provides what it calls “case studies” of each of 10 broad categories of nests, with photographs and detailed drawings.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Break the Skin’
By LEE MARTIN
Reviewed by ADAM LANGER
In “Break the Skin” Lee Martin weaves the stories of two women to explore the evils that can lie beneath the banality of small-town life.
THE MEDIA EQUATION
Ugly Details in Selling Newspapers
By DAVID CARR
James O’Shea reported out the deals that tipped over the owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.
BOOKSHELF
Femme Fatale of a Newspaper War
By SAM ROBERTS
Books about the dawn of the tabloid wars, enduring sights of historic Dutch New York and civil rights in the city.
A Writer’s Estate to Yield $150,000 Literary Prizes
By CHARLES McGRATH
A surprise from the estate of the memoirist Donald Windham: at least $1 million a year in grants to writers.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘The Red Market’
By SCOTT CARNEY
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The journalist Scott Carney reports on the grisly market for human body parts.
New York Public Library Buys Timothy Leary’s Papers
By PATRICIA COHEN
The archive of the drug guru Timothy Leary includes accounts of Allen Ginsburg’s and Jack Kerouac’s experiments with psilocybin.
‘La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life’
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Reviewed by STEPHEN CLARKE
The Times’s Elaine Sciolino explains the French art de vivre.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘See a Little Light’
By BOB MOULD
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
The Hüsker Dü guitarist Bob Mould traces his career and life in and out of the closet in “See a Little Light.”
Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth
By PATRICIA COHEN
Rationality evolved to win arguments, some scholars suggest, and flawed reasoning is itself an adaptation.
Sunday Book Review
Adam Cohen
‘Ten Thousand Saints’
By ELEANOR HENDERSON
Reviewed by STACEY D'ERASMO
Eleanor Henderson’s fierce, elegiac novel follows a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
‘The Secret Knowledge’
By DAVID MAMET
Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
David Mamet comes out swinging against liberalism, offering his views on religion and American culture.
‘State of Wonder’
By ANN PATCHETT
Reviewed by FERNANDA EBERSTADT
Ann Patchett’s heroine, on the trail of a reclusive scientist in the Amazon, faces demons real and imagined.
‘Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention’
By MANNING MARABLE
Reviewed by TOURÉ
Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X draws upon letters, diaries, F.B.I. reports and interviews with contemporaries to trace his career and illuminate his intellectual and spiritual development.
‘House of Exile’
By EVELYN JUERS
Reviewed by JOHN SIMON
The cultural diaspora of the Nazi years, through the eyes of Thomas Mann’s brother and unlikely sister-in-law.
‘Witness to an Extreme Century’
By ROBERT JAY LIFTON
Reviewed by MAURICE ISSERMAN
A memoir by Robert Jay Lifton, a leading “psychohistorian” who studied how individuals have coped with extreme circumstances: war, torture, genocide.
‘A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion’
By RON HANSEN
Reviewed by STEVEN HEIGHTON
A sensational Jazz Age crime that also inspired James M. Cain and William Styron is the basis for Ron Hansen’s propulsive novel.
‘Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris’
By ASTI HUSTVEDT
Reviewed by KATHRYN HARRISON
Asti Hustvedt examines the dubious research of a 19th-century French doctor who used hypnosis to induce hysteria in female subjects.
‘How the Hippies Saved Physics’
By DAVID KAISER
Reviewed by GEORGE JOHNSON
In the 1970s, eccentric young scientists challenged convention and re-energized modern physics.
‘Separated by Their Sex’
By MARY BETH NORTON
Reviewed by JOYCE E. CHAPLIN
Between 1640 and 1760, Mary Beth Norton contends, men were increasingly viewed as public beings and women as private ones.
‘Vaclav & Lena’
By HALEY TANNER
Reviewed by LUCY FERRISS
A first novel about young love in a Russian émigré community.
‘The Storm of War’
By ANDREW ROBERTS
Reviewed by TIMOTHY SNYDER
This clear, accessible account of World War II asks how the Wehrmacht, the best fighting force, wound up losing.
‘The Central Park Five’
By SARAH BURNS
Reviewed by MAGGIE NELSON
This is the first sustained treatment of the Central Park jogger case since the defendants’ convictions were vacated.
Children’s Books
Paradoxical Stories for Children
By DAVID LUCAS and CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Reviewed by MARJORIE INGALL
A dreamy experience: from “The Lying Carpet.”
“The Lying Carpet” and “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making” celebrate paradox and the transformative power of storytelling.
‘Junonia’
By KEVIN HENKES
Reviewed by ANN M. MARTIN
A blossoming 10-year-old seeks a rare seashell in this middle grade novel.
Picture Books About Frogs
Reviewed by LEONARD S. MARCUS
“Leap Back Home to Me” and “999 Tadpoles” involve little frogs and the security that family brings.
Picture Books About the Backyard
By JOHN BERENDT and LISA CAMPBELL ERNST
Reviewed by PAMELA PAUL
“My Baby Blue Jays” chronicles a family of birds living on the author’s balcony; and “How Things Work in the Ward” explains the everyday mysteries of acorns, dandelions, rocks and dirt.
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