Sunday Book Review
‘House of Holes ’
By NICHOLSON BAKER
Reviewed by SAM LIPSYTE
Jonathan Calugi
Nicholson Baker’s hilarious, extremely dirty novel is an episodic assortment of fantasies that celebrate desire, frailty and the comedy of life.
‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’
By BINYAVANGA WAINAINA
Reviewed by ALEXANDRA FULLER
Finding refuge in fiction, a Kenyan teenager becomes a writer in this coming-of-age memoir.
‘The Devil All the Time’
By DONALD RAY POLLOCK
Reviewed by JOSH RITTER
The characters in Donald Ray Pollock’s violence-soaked novel march in a parade of betrayals, sacrifices, suicides, rapes and executions.
‘My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz’
Edited by SARAH GREENOUGH
Reviewed by DEBORAH SOLOMON
An annotated selection of the voluminous correspondence between the painter and the photographer.
‘The Beginning of Infinity’
By DAVID DEUTSCH
Reviewed by DAVID ALBERT
The inexhaustibly curious physicist David Deutsch offers views on everything from subatomic particles to the shaping of the universe itself.
‘The Echo Chamber’
By LUKE WILLIAMS
Reviewed by JAN STUART
In this novel, a shy writer with tinnitus embraces the quiet relief of storytelling.
‘Ghost in the Wires’
By KEVIN MITNICK
Reviewed by J. D. BIERSDORFER
A pioneer of the corporate-computer break-in recounts the hacking exploits that led him on a nearly 20-year cat-and-mouse game with law enforcement.
‘All About Love’
By LISA APPIGNANESI
Reviewed by JUDITH SHULEVITZ
Lisa Appignanesi examines the “unruly emotion” of love and its impact throughout the course of our lives.
‘The Big Scrum’
By JOHN J. MILLER
Reviewed by JUDY BATTISTA
This history of football’s early years examines how, over a century ago, the sport’s opponents wanted it banned; then Theodore Roosevelt stepped into the huddle.
‘Retromania’
By SIMON REYNOLDS
Reviewed by TOM PAYNE
Simon Reynolds laments how pop culture feeds on its own history, borrowing from a past that is ever more immediate.
‘If Sons, Then Heirs’
By LORENE CARY
Reviewed by ROY HOFFMAN
Lorene Cary’s latest novel explores a family’s struggle involving race and inheritance in the South.
‘Rules of Civility’
By AMOR TOWLES
Reviewed by LIESL SCHILLINGER
The characters in Amor Towles’s first novel try to reinvent themselves in 1930s New York.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
‘The Incredible Life of Balto ’
By MEGHAN McCARTHY
Reviewed by PAMELA PAUL
The story of the famous sled dog Balto, who led his team through punishing conditions, saving lives.
Book News and Reviews
A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran
By PATRICIA COHEN
Marcus Yam for The New York Times
"Our aim is that for each subject, we should find the best person in the entire world," said Ehsan Yarshater, director of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
At 53, Ehsan Yarshater embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. He’s 91 now, and he’s still toiling away.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘The Persistence of the Color Line’
By RANDALL KENNEDY
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
Randall Kennedy’s new book sets what we know of Barack Obama’s presidency in relief against the sorry history of racial politics in America.
Nurturing Weird Families in Tennessee
By JULIE BOSMAN
In his first novel, “The Family Fang,” Kevin Wilson writes about unusual families after having grown up in an unusual family and hoping to raise his son in an unusual way.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘A First-Rate Madness’
By NASSIR GHAEMI
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
Nassir Ghaemi argues for the gloomy and even the unhinged in his book on the relationship between leadership and mental illness.
Voice of the Workingman to Be Poet Laureate
By CHARLES McGRATH
Philip Levine, whose poems capture the industrial heartland, is to be the next United States poet laureate.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘The Long Night ’
By STEVE WICK
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
Steve Wick’s “Long Night” is a biography of William L. Shirer, war correspondent and author on Nazi Germany.
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE HELP'
‘The Maids’ Now Have Their Say
By MANOHLA DARGIS
“The Help,” Tate Taylor’s movie set in civil-rights-era Mississippi, shifts between black maids and their employers.
Video: On Race and HollywoodBOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘Playing With Fire’
By PAMELA CONSTABLE
Reviewed by JANE PERLEZ
In her book “Playing With Fire” Pamela Constable gives American readers a tour of contemporary Pakistan, a complex, little understood nation of immense importance to the United States.
Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show
By JULIE BOSMAN
BookStats, a large survey conducted by two major trade groups, revealed that sales of e-books and juvenile and adult fiction have helped the publishing industry expand.
CITY ROOM
From Koch, a Child's Tale of Health and Self-Acceptance
By SAM ROBERTS
Former Mayor Edward I. Koch and his sister have written a cautionary children's book, "Eddie Shapes Up," a more or less autobiographical account of a youngster who faces down dietary demons to emerge healthy and self-accepting.
THE POUR
A Seasonal Thirst for a Good Read
By ERIC ASIMOV
Four provocative wine books are suitable for the beach, pool or porch.
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
PRINT & E-BOOKS
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
HARDCOVER
- Trade Fiction
- Mass-Market Fiction
- Nonfiction
PAPERBACK
Babar at 80
Pamela Paul, the Book Review's children's books editor, sits down with Laurent de Brunhoff, who has kept his father's Babar character alive for 80 years.
Back Page
ESSAY
Dragons Ascendant: George R. R. Martin and the Rise of Fantasy
By DAVID ORR
The titanic success of George R. R. Martin’s gritty “Song of Ice and Fire” series has swept away the traditional “aren’t we a little old for this?” view of fantasy.
Nonfiction Chronicle
By TARA McKELVEY
Books about the Monty Python actor Michael Palin, sex abuse within the Mormon Church and murder and racial issues in 1960s New York; and a collection of essays by Edward Hoagland.
Book Review Podcast
Featuring Sam Lipsyte on Nicholson Baker’s “House of Holes”; and Deborah Soloman on the letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz.
This Week's Book Review Podcast (mp3)
Book Review Podcast: Nicholson Baker's 'House of Holes'
August 12, 2011
The 80th Anniversary of Babar
August 12, 2011
Sales Soar for Newly Minted Poet Laureate
August 11, 2011
Book Review Features
TBR
Inside the List
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
Can a literary vegetarian from Brooklyn unite what basketball has torn asunder? Why else would Duke and the University of North Carolina have assigned Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” to all incoming freshmen?
Business
OFF THE SHELF
Inside the Greek Volcano
By NANCY F. KOEHN
In a new book, the hedge fund founder Jason Manolopoulos analyzes the roots of Greece’s problems — and the larger reverberations.
Metropolitan
BOOKSHELF
What They Said, Exactly, About New York
By SAM ROBERTS
Two new books, “New York: The Big Apple Quote Book” and “Literary Brooklyn” explore sentiments about the city and a borough that inspires literature.
Style
Nina Sankovitch, Allaying Grief Through Books
By JAN HOFFMAN
After the death of her eldest sister, Nina Sankovitch turned to books: reading and writing them.
Literary Lions, by Their Cubs
By LIESL SCHILLINGER
The daughters of the literary luminaries Joseph Heller, A. J. Ayer and William Styron have their own tales to tell — about their fathers.
Travel
HOUSE PROUD
A Cottage Just Right for Frodo
By JOYCE WADLER
The Hobbit House, a guesthouse, brings the shire to Montana, with cottages, fairy houses and other tiny structures dotting 20 acres of land.
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