All Reviews

• The Unbearable Pathos of Thomas Mann

  Britta Böhler has dramatized for us an important long weekend in Thomas Mann's life.

  Morten Høi JensenMar 25, 2016

  • Fiction

• 

  A Sense of a Real Home

  "The Year of the Runaways" and "The Association of Small Bombs" both address political violence in North India and lives of Punjabis abroad.

  Anita FelicelliMar 24, 2016

  • Fiction

• 

  The Bones of What You Believe

  Tom Bissell transforms Jesus's Apostles from figures of myth to tangible human beings, in search of a scholarly perspective on the origins of Christianity.

  Adam Fleming PettyMar 24, 2016

  • History

  • Religion

• 

  The Darkness of Primitive Desires

  "The Vegetarian" probes the boundaries between sanity and madness, passion and obsession, desire and violence.

  Lesley TritesMar 22, 2016

  • Noir

• 

  Bildungsroman in the Postmodern Era

  Reading "Wreck and Order" is like listening to a friend reflect with intelligence on some pretty questionable choices.

  Dehn GilmoreMar 21, 2016

  • Fiction

• 

  Voluntary Exile

  "In Other Words" recounts Lahiri's full immersion in the language through a series of images.

  Michael F. MooreMar 21, 2016

  • Memoir & Essay

• My Year of Sarah Schulman

  It would be easy to enjoy "The Cosmopolitans" even if you had never heard the name Sarah Schulman before.

  Hugh RyanMar 20, 2016

  • Fiction

  • Gender & Sexuality

• Running Down a Dream

  An idiosyncratic collection of essays and short fictions considering an array of artistic, intellectual, and cultural celebrities.

  Louis BuryMar 20, 2016

  • Fiction

  • Literary Criticism

• Embarrassing Ourselves

  The Introduction to the new translation of "On Grammatology," the Afterword, and the revisions to the translation all represent significant steps backward.

  Geoffrey BenningtonMar 20, 2016

  • Philosophy & Religion

• The Conservative Mindset

  For Russell Amos Kirk, American conservatism was an attitude or mindset, not an explicit political program.

  Allen MendenhallMar 19, 2016

  • Politics

• 

  Disappearing Acts

  "Ways to Disappear" and "Perfect Days" couldn't be more different. One I found unputdownable; the other made me want to send it sailing across the room.

  Jim RulandMar 18, 2016

  • Noir

• Unpacking Our Palates

  Bee Wilson tackles our complex relationship to food as well as how we transfer our pleasure response from the foods we love to the foods we should love.

  Susan PaganiMar 18, 2016

  • Food & Drink

• Young, Gifted, and Black

  Rashod Ollison's memoir "Soul Serenade" is a special book, in part because it doesn't claim to be.

  Emily J. LordiMar 18, 2016

  • Music

• 

  Overlooked, Again

  Charles Taylor reviews Tom Jones's autobiography.

  Charles TaylorMar 17, 2016

  • Music

• Climate-Anxious Late Environmentalism

  "Green Planets" takes as its starting point the fact that we and everything else that lives on/in/through planet Earth are in a lot of trouble.

  Veronica HollingerMar 17, 2016

  • SF

• 

  Imitatio Americana

  "Against Self-Reliance" amends the popular story of a US that gives primary importance to the "sacred self."

  D. Berton EmersonMar 17, 2016

  • History

  • Literary Criticism