All Reviews

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  The Shaver Mystery: The Most Sensational True Story Ever Told

  Gregory L. Reece Aug 26, 2013
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  The Uses and Abuses of Illusion

  For all his idiosyncrasies, Palmer was emblematic of this cultural turn to Fictionalism, the adoption of an “as if” orientation to secure enchantment in a rational, secular age.

  Michael SalerAug 26, 2013
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  Bo Xilai: The Last of a Nefarious Trio to Fall

  Bo Xilai and his wife are at the center of the most notorious scandal in China. He was convicted today.

  Thomas E. KelloggAug 26, 2013
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  Chutes and Ladders: Michael Joyce's "Disappearance"

  How do we recognize who people are, in a world where we can play so many parts, where we can don so many disguises?

  Loren EasonAug 26, 2013
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  There are Two Worlds: Roxana Robinson's "Sparta"

  Self-annihilation stalks Roxana Robinson’s new novel Sparta like a specter of unholy temptation, belonging to what her protagonist Conrad Farrell calls “the lower world … the dark, dreaming undercurrent.”

  Joanna ScuttsAug 25, 2013
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  Hate the Brand, Love the Man: Why Ed Hardy Matters

  “Emblems designed to hug bodies look terrible on hoodies.”

  Margot MifflinAug 25, 2013
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  Vulgar Modernism: Loren Glass’s “Counterculture Colophon”

  Loren Glass’s Counterculture Colophon: Grove Press, the Evergreen Review, and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde is one of those books that makes you wonder why no one thought of writing it already.

  Phil FordAug 24, 2013
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  What Can We Learn from Jared Diamond?

  Jared Diamond is undoubtedly of the cosmographic bent. We get to be like Montaigne, interpreting this traveler’s testimony according to our own purposes.

  Andrew Benedict-NelsonAug 22, 2013
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  “Inside the Gray Bubble of Those Days”: Shawn Vestal's "Godforsaken Idaho"

  Godforsaken Idaho is weirdly and wildly funny, a blistering set from a writer with a far-reaching range — like Washington Phillips by way of Denis Johnson.

  William BoyleAug 21, 2013
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  Answers on a Postcard: Informed Poetry

  Tom Chivers’s recent anthology promises a corrective to the assumption that poetic form is a fixed thing, an inherited corset.

  Lytton SmithAug 20, 2013
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  The Tree Breaks Free of the Forest: Charlie Smith’s "Men in Miami Hotels"

  Stolen emeralds, transvestite performers, and gunshots, are just some of the obstacles Charlie Smith’s protagonist faces in order to save his mother’s home.

  Kathleen AlcottAug 19, 2013
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  An Impossible Number of Books: Matthew L. Jockers's "Macroanalysis"

  Into this uncertain scene comes an important new volume by Matthew Jockers, offering yet another headword (“macroanalysis,” by analogy to macroeconomics) and a range of quantitative studies of 19th-century fiction.

  Matthew Wilkens Aug 16, 2013
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  Body Conscious: On Somaesthetics

  The project of Richard Shusterman’s philosophical work on the body is an ambitious one.

  Janet SarbanesAug 16, 2013
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  No Superheroes in Hollywood

  The West Coast Avengers were one of the few classic comic book series to be set in Southern California.

  Matthew Wolf-MeyerAug 15, 2013
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  Taking Over the Judiciary: The Impact of the Federalist Society

  John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito are all current or former members of the Society.

  Stephen RohdeAug 15, 2013

• Mobile India: Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey’s “The Great Indian Phone Book”

  Today there are nearly 900 million cell phone subscribers in India.

  Aug 15, 2013