jueves, 1 de septiembre de 2011

Book reviews


Book News and Reviews
BOOKS OF THE TIMES

‘The Neighborhood Project ’

David Sloan Wilson
"The more nurturing neighborhoods" glowed brighter during the holidays, a biologist found.
David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, uses his training for social good: his neighborhood.
The closing of the Seattle Public Library system, including the Central Library in downtown Seattle, has become something of an end-of-summer ritual.

Book-Loving City Forgoes Free Ones for a Week

The closure of the Seattle Public Library due to cuts has become something of a late-summer tradition in recent years.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS

‘Bailey’

This picture book features a big-eared mutt whose presence at school is both welcome and unquestioned.
The first issue of Action Comics No. 1, featuring Superman. The issue, available in September, is part of DC Comics company-wide push to renumber all of its superhero titles and give the characters new looks.

Heroes Take Flight, Again

In rebooting all its continuing series, including Justice League and Action Comics, DC Comics will revise or jettison decades of continuity in its heroes’ lives.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Mick Jagger with James Brown backstage at the filming of the 1964 concert film

‘Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue’

With the biography “Jagger,” Marc Spitz weighs in on the longstanding grievances between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Tom Perrotta's new novel, “The Leftovers,” comes out on Tuesday.

A Writer Deals With Success as Not the End of the World

In “The Leftovers,” the comic novelist Tom Perrotta advances the more complicated worldview that has characterized his most recent works.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES

Poets’ Visions of America From the Inside and Out

Poetry collections by Kathleesn Ossip, Tracy K. Smitjh, Jane Hirschfield, Dilruba Ahmed and William Carlos Williams.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
George Pelecanos

‘The Cut’

A novel from George Pelecanos, a writer and producer of “The Wire,” introduces Spero Lucas, a Washington investigator.
Sunday Book Review

‘The Leftovers’

Adrian Tomine
Tom Perrotta’s new novel examines how ordinary people react to extraordinary situations in the wake of a rapturelike event that has whisked millions of people off the face of the earth.
Joseph Heller

Books About Joseph Heller

A biography and a memoir examine the life and career of the author of “Catch-22.”
Enrique Krauze

‘Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America’

A look at literary and political figures in Latin America.
Congressional committee members examine passports of Japanese picture brides at the immigration station of Angel Island, Calif., July 25, 1920.

‘The Buddha in the Attic’

In Julie Otsuka’s novel, Japanese women sail to America in the early 1900s to become the wives of men they have not met.

‘Wendy and the Lost Boys’

A biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein reveals a full and complicated life.

‘The Magician King’

A sequel to “The Magicians” revolves around an unexpected quest.
Tracy K. Smith

‘Life on Mars’

The poet Tracy Smith imagines a soundtrack for the universe and mourns her father, who worked on the Hubble Telescope.

‘The Secret Life of Pronouns’

A psychologist argues that pronouns, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions reflect our interior lives.
Jesse Ball

‘The Curfew’

This dystopian novel reveals a world where music is banned and punishment is swift.

‘Starting From Happy’

In this illustrated novel, a woman content to be alone meets her mate.
Book Review Back Page
ESSAY
This door hung in Frank Shay’s bookshop in Greenwich Village from 1920 to 1925.

A Portal to 1920s Greenwich Village

An unusual artifact resurfaced at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin — a narrow pine door from a Greenwich Village bookstore, covered with some 242 signatures.
READING LIFE

What We Do to Books

The creases, the annotations and the blood stains all imprint a book with the fact of my having read it.
CRIME

Deaths in the Family

Mystery novels by Mark Billingham, James Sallis, Maureen Jennings and Kjell Eriksson.

Nonfiction Chronicle

Books about the history of smallpox, Shakespeare’s impact, Anna Politkovskaya’s journalistic work in Russia and growing up in the Southern Baptist church.

Book Review Podcast

Featuring Tom Perrotta on the fictional rapture in his new book, “The Leftovers”; Erica Heller reminisces about her father, the “Catch-22” author, Joseph Heller.
  •  This Week's Book Review Podcast (mp3)
The Times's Critics
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Book Review Features
TBR
Penn Jillette

Inside the List

Penn Jillette, the taller and louder half of Penn & Teller, appears on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 14 with his profanity-laced memoir-cum-atheist-manifesto “God, No!”

Editors’ Choice

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Paperback Row

Paperback books of particular interest.
Metropolitan
BOOKSHELF
EMERGENCY An illustration by George Harkins from “9/11: The World Speaks.”

Stories of 9/11 and Its Aftermath

A sampling of books devoted to the remembrances of New Yorkers who survived the attack.

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