Book News and Reviews
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.
Book-Loving City Forgoes Free Ones for a Week
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
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.
Heroes Take Flight, Again
By DAVE ITZKOFF
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
‘Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue’
By MARC SPITZ
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
With the biography “Jagger,” Marc Spitz weighs in on the longstanding grievances between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
A Writer Deals With Success as Not the End of the World
By GREGORY COWLES
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
By DANA JENNINGS
Poetry collections by Kathleesn Ossip, Tracy K. Smitjh, Jane Hirschfield, Dilruba Ahmed and William Carlos Williams.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
‘The Cut’
By GEORGE PELECANOS
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN
A novel from George Pelecanos, a writer and producer of “The Wire,” introduces Spero Lucas, a Washington investigator.
Sunday Book Review
‘The Leftovers’
By TOM PERROTTA
Reviewed by STEPHEN KING
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.
Books About Joseph Heller
Reviewed by BLAKE BAILEY
A biography and a memoir examine the life and career of the author of “Catch-22.”
‘Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America’
By ENRIQUE KRAUZE
Reviewed by PAUL BERMAN
A look at literary and political figures in Latin America.
‘The Buddha in the Attic’
By JULIE OTSUKA
Reviewed by ALIDA BECKER
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’
By JULIE SALAMON
Reviewed by FRANCINE PROSE
A biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein reveals a full and complicated life.
‘The Magician King’
By LEV GROSSMAN
Reviewed by DAN KOIS
A sequel to “The Magicians” revolves around an unexpected quest.
‘Life on Mars’
By TRACY K. SMITH
Reviewed by JOEL BROUWER
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’
By JAMES W. PENNEBAKER
Reviewed by BEN ZIMMER
A psychologist argues that pronouns, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions reflect our interior lives.
‘The Curfew’
By JESSE BALL
Reviewed by WILLIAM GIRALDI
This dystopian novel reveals a world where music is banned and punishment is swift.
‘Starting From Happy’
Written and illustrated by Patricia Marx
Reviewed by ALEXANDRA JACOBS
In this illustrated novel, a woman content to be alone meets her mate.
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HARDCOVER
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PAPERBACK
Book Review Back Page
ESSAY
A Portal to 1920s Greenwich Village
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
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
By GEOFF DYER
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
By MARILYN STASIO
Mystery novels by Mark Billingham, James Sallis, Maureen Jennings and Kjell Eriksson.
Nonfiction Chronicle
By MEGAN BUSKEY
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)
Rating the No. 1's: 'Justice League'
August 31, 2011
Imagining the Rolling Stones Without Keith Richards
August 31, 2011
Thinking Cap: When Foul Language Brings Fouls
August 30, 2011
Book Review Features
TBR
Inside the List
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
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!”
Metropolitan
BOOKSHELF
Stories of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
By SAM ROBERTS
A sampling of books devoted to the remembrances of New Yorkers who survived the attack.
