“You & Me,” Padgett Powell’s sendup of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” is a slim novel in which two men sit around drinking and talking about everything and about nothing.
Quirke, a Dublin pathologist, returns for an encore in the latest novel by the Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black.
A federal judge earlier had allowed the Authors Guild to represent all authors affected by Google's ambitious digitalization project. A higher court has agreed to consider the company's objections.
Larry McMurtry auctioned some 300,000 used books from his bookstores in Archer City, Tex.
In “The Way the World Works,” a collection of essays from the last 15 years, Nicholson Baker caroms among topics as diverse as video games and World War II pacifism.
Mr. Kubert’s work, which included Sgt. Rock and Tor, stretched from the Golden Age of the superhero to the gritty realism of the graphic novel.
In “The Pushcart War,” “The Toothpaste Millionaire” and many other books, Ms. Merrill’s characters overcome the odds.
Hollywood is a cesspool of celebrity worship, child abuse and sexual obsessions in the new novel from Bruce Wagner.
Ben Macintyre’s “Double Cross” and Stephen Talty’s “Agent Garbo” both tell the histories of the double agents who were able to trick their German contacts about the Allied invasion.
Mr. Powell was convicted of kidnapping and killing a Los Angeles police officer in 1963, a brutal crime that inspired the popular book and film “The Onion Field.”
Marc Smirnoff, the editor of the Oxford American, a Southern literary magazine, has been fired after accusations of sexual harassment and has started an aggressive public counteroffensive.
How hundreds of volumes were taken and sold — and the library director charged with the crime — sheds light on some of the practices that continue to bedevil Italy.
Mr. Rohr, who made a fortune in real estate after fleeing the Nazis, was honored by his children in 2006 with the creation of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
The Renaissance scholars and married couple Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff are trying to renew the reputation of Thomas Browne, a 17th-century physician.
Mr. O’Donnell was a co-author of the book for the Broadway musical “Hairspray,” which became a phenomenal success, winning eight Tonys, including best book of a musical.
In “How to Be Gay,” David M. Halperin argues that when it comes to defining what it means to be a homosexual man, sex is overrated.
Three new picture books celebrate Brooklyn, Times Square and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Maria Semple’s razor-sharp sendup of privileged Seattle is a novel about a fish-out-of-water mother, her Microsoft-star husband, their bright daughter and a back story shrouded in mystery.
Marie NDiaye
In Marie NDiaye’s novel, women draw on reserves of love, common sense and even self-mockery to counteract the damage being done to them by narcissistic family members.
The author of “Grand Pursuit” and “A Beautiful Mind” likes Victorian novelists for their deliciously wicked humor and the Russians for their political and philosophical musings.
Rachel Cusk’s latest memoir describes her divorce and what came next.
In Dale Peck’s novel, a Midwesterner arrives in New York to claim his inheritance, a brownstone that may contain buried treasure.
Megan Abbott’s latest thriller finds power, desire and revenge in the insular world of high school cheerleading.
Michael J. Casey blames a “vast global financial system” for our economic malaise. Daniel Gross sees a brighter future ahead.
Jill Lepore traces American ideas about life and death, from before the cradle to beyond the grave.
Alan Ehrenhalt describes a demographic reversal, with the wealthy moving to cities and the working class moving to the suburbs.
A sweeping cultural history of the ideal of sincerity.
New books by Sadie Jones, Natasa Dragnic, Jane Rogers, Jennifer Miller and Simon Mawer.
Vaddey Ratner’s first novel, which parallels her own life, tells of a little girl’s struggle under the Khmer Rouge.
A young hacker on the run in the Middle East finds himself in a secret world.
Sadakat Kadri’s history of Shariah explores how Islamic law has evolved.
The French journalist Claude Lanzmann is best known for his epic film, “Shoah.”
In Chicago, 1919 brought bloodshed, riots and municipal crises.
Mr. Rakoff, a humorist and essayist, was known for his incisive wit and keen eye for the preposterous.
A piece of the hearth before which Edgar Allan Poe composed his most celebrated poem languished in obscurity at Columbia University for a century.
Despite predictions of the death of the book, it’s as lively as ever.
This week, Emma Gilbey Keller talks about Rachel Cusk’s “Aftermath”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Tyler Cowen discusses Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book about income inequality; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.
M. L. Stedman — whose novel “The Light Between Oceans” enters the list at No. 7 — really doesn’t like publicity.
We separate authors like James Joyce and John Grisham into “highbrow” and “lowbrow.” So are some books just better than others?
Ray Bradbury didn’t just extrapolate the evolution of gadgetry; he foresaw how it would stunt and deform our psyches.
August 14, 2012
August 14, 2012
August 14, 2012
Books on the life of Lorenz Hart, the character of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Judge Frederic Block, 78, who still hears cases as a senior judge in Federal District Court for the Eastern District.
Robert Provine, who has studied the physiology of laughing, yawning, tickling and other behaviors, celebrates small science, which he calls “sidewalk neuroscience.”
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