On the Cover of Sunday's Book Review
'The Boy in the Moon'
By IAN BROWN
Reviewed by ROGER ROSENBLATT
In this memoir, the journalist Ian Brown tries to understand his profoundly disabled son.
'The Year We Left Home'
By JEAN THOMPSON
Reviewed by JONATHAN DEE
In this sympathetically witty novel, which spans 30 years, a Midwestern family struggles for economic and emotional stability.
'The Constitution of Liberty'
By F. A. HAYEK
Reviewed by FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
The definitive edition of the economist Friedrich A. Hayek's monumental work, which argues that no central government can know enough to organize society as efficiently as the market.
'Netsuke'
By RIKKI DUCORNET
Reviewed by MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM
As his wife chases after beauty, the narrator of this novel, an aging psychoanalyst, obsessively sleeps with his patients.
'Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets'
By WENDY LESSER
Reviewed by EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
A critic speculates about what Shostakovich was really expressing in his string quartets.
'The Silent Land'
By GRAHAM JOYCE
Reviewed by KEVIN BROCKMEIER
After an avalanche, a couple on a skiing holiday notice changes to their existence, in this eerie fantasy of isolation, marital love and the afterworld.
'Founding Gardeners'
By ANDREA WULF
Reviewed by PAULA DEITZ
A history of the founding father's passion for agriculture and botany, and how those pursuits reflected their political ideas.
'The Age of Deception'
By MOHAMED ELBARADEI
Reviewed by LESLIE H. GELB
Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel prize-winning former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a major player in the revolution in Egypt, describes his quest to stem the atomic tide.
'The Great Night'
By CHRIS ADRIAN
Reviewed by LAURA MILLER
Chris Adrian's novel is a loose retelling of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," set in contemporary San Francisco.
'The Immortalization Commission'
By JOHN GRAY
Reviewed by CLANCY MARTIN
John Gray, a philosopher, explores a century or so of investigations into immortality by mystically inclined intellectuals.
'Idea Man'
By PAUL ALLEN
Reviewed by GARY RIVLIN
The Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen charts his uneasy relationship with Bill Gates during the software giant's early years.
'You Are Free: Stories'
By DANZY SENNA
Reviewed by POLLY ROSENWAIKE
Race, class and gender affect the identity struggles of the nuanced characters in Danzy Senna's story collection.
'This Life Is in Your Hands'
By MELISSA COLEMAN
Reviewed by MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN
A memoir of a family sundered by their return to the land in the 1960s.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
'Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator!'
By MO WILLEMS
Reviewed by PAMELA PAUL
Mo Willems's latest picture book features a little girl and her stuffed animal. But in contrast to his Knuffle Bunny series, this one is told from the toy's point of view.
ESSAY
Selling Books by Day, Writing Them by Night
By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN
Once a bookseller, always a bookseller, say some published authors who haven't quit their day jobs.
CRIME
The Departed
By MARILYN STASIO
Mystery novels by Thomas Perry, Belinda Bauer, Chris Knopf and the late Robert B. Parker.
Book Review Podcast
Featuring Ian Brown on his memoir, "The Boy in the Moon"; and Leslie Gelb on Mohamed ElBaradei and nuclear disarmament.
A Comedian Laughs All the Way to Dystopia
By DAVE ITZKOFF
The comedian Albert Brooks, who publishes his debut comic novel, "2030," next Tuesday, finds humor amid misery.
