Shiver Me Timbers: Daniel Handler’s Novel for Adults
"I am not tempted to dismiss Handler as glib, despite being sometimes wearied by his calculated ingenuity. The man is a clever, facile writer."
All Reviews
What Is New About the New American University?
Will Michael Crow’s “New American University” help re-democratize the US or continue a trend of universities ratifying social inequality and wind up on a dust heap of halfway measures?
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Stabbing a man to death isn’t easy.
Memory, Trauma, and the Diasporic Subject
Salah el Moncef’s vertiginous psycho-thriller, "The Offering," deals with the impossibility of a happy forgetting.
On Her Own Terms
Brian Morton paints the contemporary New York literary scene with Austen-esque irony — through the eyes of a 75-year-old feminist.
Remaking the Middle East: Faisal and Lawrence of Arabia
Ali Allawi’s biography, "Faisal I of Iraq," delivers a spectacularly urgent message at a time when Syria and Iraq are again riven by war and the Islamic State blusters about colonial borders.
Sven Birkerts Interviews Sven Birkerts
Do Saul Bellow’s smart, thoughtful essays stand up to his enthusiastic, unruly novels?
Pata Pata Time
In a shift away from heavy, didactic, and often crushingly dark South African fiction, S.J. Naudé’s nuanced, economical first short story collection "explores the scrambled sense of identity of the cross-border white South African."
Pro: Abortion Is a Social Good
What was “pro-life” about a movement that so easily discarded a human being and valorized her death — to save a cluster of cells?
Everything Particular Is Irreplaceable
Lowry Pressly on Forrest Gander's book of poetry.
The Numinous Dead
Jacob Mikanowski on Paul Koudounaris's new book.
Political Revolutionaries, International Conspiracies, and the Fearful, Frenzied Elites
Constitutional reformers, religious dissenters, and simple political enemies.
The Call to Transmission
Madeleine Kruhly on Allison Adelle Hedge Coke's new book of poetry.
When the Sun Falls over Tahrir
Once Upon a Revolution details the early years after the Tahrir uprising: a methodical, unforgiving, nearly day-by-day account of mismanaged political parties, state repression, chaos, and fear.
The Addict’s Journey
In Kevin Sessums’s memoir, meth-fueled sex and near homelessness coexist with descriptions of lavish Oscar parties.
The Hospital Suite: A Way of Looking
A graphically illustrated review of John Porcellino’s graphic novel "The Hospital Suite"