domingo, 14 de agosto de 2011

Books review


Sunday Book Review

‘House of Holes ’

Jonathan Calugi
Nicholson Baker’s hilarious, extremely dirty novel is an episodic assortment of fantasies that celebrate desire, frailty and the comedy of life.
Binyavanga Wainaina

‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’

Finding refuge in fiction, a Kenyan teenager becomes a writer in this coming-of-age memoir.
Donald Ray Pollock

‘The Devil All the Time’

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’

An annotated selection of the voluminous correspondence between the painter and the photographer.
David Deutsch

‘The Beginning of Infinity’

The inexhaustibly curious physicist David Deutsch offers views on everything from subatomic particles to the shaping of the universe itself.

‘The Echo Chamber’

In this novel, a shy writer with tinnitus embraces the quiet relief of storytelling.
Kevin Mitnick after his arrest in 1995.

‘Ghost in the Wires’

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’

Lisa Appignanesi examines the “unruly emotion” of love and its impact throughout the course of our lives.

‘The Big Scrum’

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.
John Lydon at the Sex Pistols' final show, Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, 1978.

‘Retromania’

Simon Reynolds laments how pop culture feeds on its own history, borrowing from a past that is ever more immediate.

‘If Sons, Then Heirs’

Lorene Cary’s latest novel explores a family’s struggle involving race and inheritance in the South.

‘Rules of Civility’

The characters in Amor Towles’s first novel try to reinvent themselves in 1930s New York.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS

‘The Incredible Life of Balto ’

The story of the famous sled dog Balto, who led his team through punishing conditions, saving lives.
Book News and Reviews
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
Randall Kennedy

‘The Persistence of the Color Line’

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.
Kevin Wilson at his home in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Nurturing Weird Families in Tennessee

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
Nassir Ghaemi

‘A First-Rate Madness’

Nassir Ghaemi argues for the gloomy and even the unhinged in his book on the relationship between leadership and mental illness.
“It’s like winning the Pulitzer. If you take it too seriously, you’re an idiot. But if you look at the names of the other poets who have won it, most of them are damn good.” — Philip Levine

Voice of the Workingman to Be Poet Laureate

Philip Levine, whose poems capture the industrial heartland, is to be the next United States poet laureate.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
William L. Shirer, left, the bureau chief for CBS radio, at the broadcasting center in Berlin in 1939.

‘The Long Night ’

Steve Wick’s “Long Night” is a biography of William L. Shirer, war correspondent and author on Nazi Germany.
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE HELP'
 Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in

‘The Maids’ Now Have Their Say

“The Help,” Tate Taylor’s movie set in civil-rights-era Mississippi, shifts between black maids and their employers.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Pamela Constable

‘Playing With Fire’

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.
Prices of devices like the Kindle have fallen.

Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show

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

From Koch, a Child's Tale of Health and Self-Acceptance

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

Four provocative wine books are suitable for the beach, pool or porch.
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
Peter Dinklage in the HBO series

Dragons Ascendant: George R. R. Martin and the Rise of Fantasy

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

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)
The Times's Critics
Recent reviews by:
Book Review Features
TBR
Jonathan Safran Foer

Inside the List

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?

Editors’ Choice

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Paperback Row

Paperback books of particular interest.
Business
OFF THE SHELF

Inside the Greek Volcano

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

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
Clockwise top left: Nina Sankovitch, on the Central Park bench dedicated to the sister she mourned by reading a book a day for a year; Peter Menz (Nina's son) on the left and Michael Menz (Nina's son) on the right, Anne-Marie, Nina's sister, center; Ms. Sankovitch with her family travelling in Poland in 1973; Ms. Sankovitch as a young girl with her sisters.

Nina Sankovitch, Allaying Grief Through Books

After the death of her eldest sister, Nina Sankovitch turned to books: reading and writing them.

Literary Lions, by Their Cubs

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
The 1,000-square-foot Hobbit House in Trout Creek, Mont., contains a symbolic gold ring hanging from a rafter and a pointy wizard's hat.

A Cottage Just Right for Frodo

The Hobbit House, a guesthouse, brings the shire to Montana, with cottages, fairy houses and other tiny structures dotting 20 acres of land.

En este dia..


ON THIS DAY

On This Day: August 14

On Aug. 14, 1945, President Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
On Aug. 14, 1886, Arthur J. Dempster, the American physicist who built the first device for measuring charged particles, was born. Following his death on March 11, 1950, his obituary appeared in The Times.

On This Date

1848The Oregon Territory was established.
1900International forces entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreigners.
1917China declared war on Germany and Austria during World War I.
1941President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of principles that renounced aggression.
1945President Harry S. Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
1947Pakistan became independent of British rule.
1969British troops arrived in Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
1973U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt.
1980Workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland - a job action that resulted in the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.
1980President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale were nominated for a second term at the Democratic National Convention in New York.
1996The Republican National Convention in San Diego nominated Bob Dole for president and Jack Kemp for vice president.
1997An unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.
2003A blackout hit the northeastern United States and part of Canada; 50 million people lost power.
2006Israel halted its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas as a U.N.-imposed cease-fire went into effect after a month of warfare that killed more than 900 people.
2009Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a Charles Manson follower who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was released from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.

Current Birthdays

Halle Berry, Actress
Actress Halle Berry turns 45 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
Mila Kunis, Actress
Actress Mila Kunis turns 28 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
1925Russell Baker, Newspaper columnist, turns 86
1930Earl Weaver, Baseball Hall of Famer, turns 81
1938Dash Crofts, Singer (Seals and Crofts), turns 73
1941David Crosby, Rock singer, musician (Crosby, Stills and Nash), turns 70
1945Steve Martin, Actor, comedian, turns 66
1946Susan Saint James, Actress ("Kate and Allie," "McMillan and Wife"), turns 65
1947Danielle Steel, Author, turns 64
1950Gary Larson, Cartoonist ("Far Side"), turns 61
1959Magic Johnson, Basketball Hall of Famer, turns 52
1959Marcia Gay Harden, Actress, turns 52
1960Sarah Brightman, Singer, turns 51
1961Susan Olsen, Actress ("The Brady Bunch"), turns 50
1968Catherine Bell, Actress ("Army Wives," "JAG"), turns 43
1975Mike Vrabel, Football player, turns 36

Historic Birthdays

70Paolo Sarpi 8/14/1552 - 1/14/1623
Venetian patriot and scholar
81Cosimo III 8/14/1642 - 10/31/1723
Italian - 6th duke of Tuscany
36Letitia Landon 8/14/1802 - 10/15/1838
English poet and novelist
86Ernest Thompson Seton 8/14/1860 - 10/23/1946
British/Canadian naturalist and writer; helped found the Boy Scouts of America
77Ernest Thayer 8/14/1863 - 8/21/1940
American writer; wrote "Casey at the Bat"
65John Galsworthy 8/14/1867 - 1/31/1933
English Nobel Prize-winning novelist and playwright (1932)
86Daniel Jackling 8/14/1869 - 3/13/1956
American mining engineer and metallurgist
79Eduardo Mallea 8/14/1903 - 11/12/1982
Argentine novelist, essayist and short-story writer
85Pierre Schaeffer 8/14/1910 - 8/19/1995
French composer, acoustician and electronics engineer
77Max Klein 8/14/1915 - 5/20/1993
American painter; invented "paint by numbers"