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Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
By Ken Auletta
Review by Evelyn Renold, November 2009
The media octopus known as Google inspires yet another book-length squirt of ink.
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Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Women They Loved
By Chris O'Dell with Katherine Ketcham
Review by Charlie Clark, October 2009
She was with the band, man—but on their payroll, not bedroll. Read about a classic ‘60s insider and what she saw—and took—at the fair.
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Homer & Langley
By E. L. Doctorow
Review by Daniel Stashower, October 2009
There's a Model T in their dining room—and you have a problem with clutter? E. L. Doctorow's new novel explores the lives of two historic hoarders.
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Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
By Matthew B. Crawford
Review by Mel Baughman, September 2009
Trading the insular world of a think tank for the grit and grime of his own motorcycle-repair shop, Crawford offers up this thoughtful celebration of the rewards of a life devoted to skilled labor.
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Last Night in Twisted River
By John Irving
Review by Daniel Stashower, September 2009
He's back—and John Irving devotees will revel in his full-throated return.
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The Brutal Telling: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
By Louise Penny
Review by Roberta Conlan, September 2009
From the Quebecois village of Three Pines to the brooding Queen Charlotte Islands and back, Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache hunts down the identity of a murdered man in order to find his killer.
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Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir
By Kay Redfield Jamison
Review by Julia M. Klein, September 2009
The psychologist author of An Unquiet Mind returns with this "finely told midlife love story [about] a romance as elegant as it is doomed."
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The Whatchamacallit
By Danny Danziger and Mark McCrum
Review by Allan Fallow, August 2009
Test your wits on this...what's the word for it? Oh, yes—quiz about the surprisingly elusive names of everyday objects.
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The Dumbest Generation
By Mark Bauerlein
Review by Elizabeth Nolan Brown, July 2009
Stuff or nonsense: Are we really raising a generation of twittering idiots? A member of the Millennial Generation tackles author Mark Bauerlein’s notion that "digital culture" is rotting the minds of young America.
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The Road to Woodstock: From the Man Behind the Legendary Festival
By Michael Lang with Holly George-Warren
Review by Evelyn Renold, July 2009
Somebody's got to sweat the details—and use sleep-deprivation tactics on Keith Townshend—if you plan to stage a cultural watershed on schedule. Michael Lang and crew did both. Woodstock was the result.
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Trouble
By Kate Christensen
Review by Wendy Smith, June 2009
You're 45, female, and in the throes of a full-blown midlife crisis—what are you gonna do? Why, head for the border, of course! Just make sure that the conundrum you're fleeing is worse than the can of worms you're about to crack open.
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The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors
By Hal Niedzviecki
Review by Janet Kinosian, June 2009
"As social critic Hal Niedzviecki explains it in The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors, Peep is the innate human desire to know and be known, to see and be seen, to communicate and be communicated with."
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After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age
By Paul Starobin
Review by Wendy Smith, June 2009
"Journalist Paul Starobin's stimulating inquiry into what the world may look like when the United States ceases to be the dominant power is a welcome respite from TV-news sound bites and the oft-hysterical pronouncements of partisan pundits."
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Who Is Mark Twain?
By Mark Twain
Review by Allan Fallow, May 2009
"Ninety-nine years after the iconic satirist died, HarperStudio has brought out Who Is Mark Twain?, a collection of two dozen unpublished essays, short stories, letters, and pieces of literary criticism."
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Do-Over!: In Which a Forty-Eight-Year-Old Father of Three Returns to Kindergarten, Summer Camp, the Prom, and Other Embarrassments
By Robin Hemley
Review by Charlie Clark, May 2009
"In his semi-triumphant book Do-Over!, middle-aged English professor Robin Hemley presents a wry, heart-rending account of the year he spent making arrangements and re-enacting the humiliations of his youth in a bid to exorcise the toxins that had long festered inside him."
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Closing Time: A Memoir
By Joe Queenan
Review by Allan Fallow, April 2009
"Closing Time is both a settling of scores and the author's effort, at age 58, to fit his father 'into some kind of context where he is not merely a villain.' This memoir captures the man's rage at the world, painting a portrait of The American Father as Latter-Day Demon."
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The Red Leather Diary
By Lily Koppel
Review by Dave Singleton, April 2009
"The discovery of a long-abandoned diary leads a twentysomething New York Times writer on a journey that would change not only her life but also the life of the diary's author. Vivid descriptions bring 1920's New York City to life as if it were a mythical salon for Manhattan intelligentsia—which, in many ways, it still is."
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Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There
By Tom Davis
Review by Charlie Clark, March 2009
"There is pathos in Davis's tale of his partnership with Franken—evident jealousy at how Franken overshadowed him in the '80s, even though they both fell victim to the SNL vets' syndrome of tanking in Hollywood movies. After Davis was fired from SNL in 1994, he and Franken could barely get it together for a long-promised reunion performance at their old school."
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The Believers
By Zoë Heller
Review by Bill Lenderking, March 2009
"The author's standout talents as a social observer, her gift for satire, and her insights into contemporary relationships and keen ear for dialogue propel the story beyond cliché and melodrama into the compelling realm of everyday conflict. The events unfold realistically and pull the reader into the gradual slide upward or downward as the characters strive for meaning, even as they have to adapt to shifting circumstances."
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Still Alice
By Lisa Genova
Review by Wendy Smith, January 2009
"It could be said that Genova slightly softens the sharpest edges of the issues posed by dementia. Nonetheless, she looks closely and compassionately at a frightening disease in an engaging work of fiction—and that’s quite enough for any first novelist to accomplish."
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Wishful Drinking
By Carrie Fisher
Review by Evelyn Renold, December 2008
"[This] book, constructed as a series of loosely connected set pieces, goes into high gear with Fisher’s hilarious account of how her parents’ marriage unraveled. While most baby boomers will remember the headlines—Eddie weds Debbie, leaves Debbie for Liz Taylor, gets dumped by Liz for Richard Burton—the devil is truly in the details."
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Don’t Go There! The Travel Detective’s Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World
By Peter Greenberg
Review by Ellen Kanner, December 2008
"With over 20 years in the business, Greenberg hasn’t been just around the block; he’s been around the world. And he hasn’t always stayed at five-star hotels. He and his team of intrepid researchers have done the gruesome groundwork so you won’t have to—finding the worst places for crime, pollution, corruption, natural disasters, and other trip-ruining factors. He doesn’t mean to be a killjoy; he’s just trying to save your vacation."
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When Will There Be Good News?
By Kate Atkinson
Review by Wendy Smith, November 2008
"When Will There Be Good News? is [Atkinson’s] third book featuring police-officer-turned-private-eye Jackson Brodie, and Atkinson initially seems to flout every genre requirement but in the end comes through with a series of dazzling twists of plot (and fate) that not only tell us whodunit but remind us that this risk-taking author never does what’s expected."
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September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years
By Maggie Scarf
Review by Julia M. Klein, September 2008
"While Scarf’s firsthand evidence is anecdotal, she supports her conclusion—that many marriages sweeten over time—with research from Stanford University’s Life-span Development Laboratory and elsewhere. 'Older adults tend to live in the moment, and this appears to increase their satisfaction and well-being,' she writes. 'It is this sense of time as a precious, diminishing resource that…lies at the source of the contentment, pleasure and satisfaction I encountered in so many of the over-50 partners I interviewed...' "
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The Book of Calamities: Five Questions about Suffering and its Meaning
By Peter Trachtenberg
Review by Janet Kinosian, September 2008
"[Trachtenberg's] starting-off point is a good friend’s sudden death from cancer. It sends him headlong into a global hunt for the underbelly of calamity, suffering, and pain—from Andrea Yates in a Texas jail to a Manhattan mother who lost her son on 9/11 to Rwandan genocide survivors who now preside as judges over government hearings for their tribulators. He speaks with Sri Lankans who survived the recent tsunami and Vietnam veterans seemingly stuck in their grief."
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Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve
By Christopher Andersen
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, August 2008
"By now, the broad details of the lives of Christopher and Dana Reeve are familiar but no less inspiring. Author Christopher Andersen, having penned bestselling biographies of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr., among others, turns his attention to the Reeves’s extraordinary marriage. And despite Andersen’s maudlin prose, Somewhere in Heaven is still a powerful read."
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Review by Evelyn Renold, August 2008
"You just know plucky Juliet will find happiness by book’s end, and she does—but not in the way you might have expected. Indeed, [the book], imaginatively constructed as a series of letters mostly to and from Juliet, is more ambitious than it appears. In addition to charting Juliet’s romantic progress, it describes, in credible detail, the Nazi occupation of Guernsey...and the travails of the locals who lived through it."
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Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad
By Bob Morris
Review by Julia M. Klein, June 2008
"For [the author] dating is 'nothing but a sport of procure, dodge, and discard.' The only comfort is, 'the worse the date is, the better the story value for later,' a sentiment that rings sadly true. But while Bob half-heartedly endures a series of bad Internet hookups, his father...sails more or less serenely into what Bob calls his 'year of dating dangerously.' "
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The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era
By Geoffrey Douglas
Review by Janet Kinosian, May 2008
"Oddly, it is [John] Kerry, the initial center of the story’s wheel, whose path is least exciting, likely because we know it and also because of Kerry’s formality in relating only surface parts of it. The other men are rewardingly honest in retelling their past and present and how the ’60s mucked up the clean line for which they were prepped."
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The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America
By Thurston Clarke
Review by Bill Lenderking, May 2008
"The Last Campaign shows that the issues of 1968 have hardly been resolved, though the contexts may have changed. Clarke clearly believes the country is again in need of a truly harmonizing leader."
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Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom
By D.G. Fulford with Phyllis Greene
Review by Julia M. Klein, April 2008
"Millions of women of the baby boom generation will, like Fulford, find themselves designated as emotional companions for their widowed mothers. For them—for all of us—Designated Daughter serves as a kind of Platonic ideal..."
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The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard
By Peter Benjaminson
Review by Evelyn Renold, April 2008
"As a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in 1975, Benjaminson was assigned to write a piece on Ballard, who'd been fired by Motown kingmaker Berry Gordy and reduced to collecting welfare. Bejaminson taped eight hours of conversation with her, which form the basis of this account."
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Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement
By Carl Oglesby
Review by Janet Kinosian, April 2008
"Oglesby...is ahead of the memoir game because this book has drama, supersmart writing, and a flair for the linear rise and fall of a great multi-act play, replete with modern-day Furies and Greek chorus."
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Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Meth Addiction
By David Sheff
Review by Jesse Kornbluth, March 2008
“David Sheff suggests that 12 million Americans have tried meth and that 1.5 million are addicted to it. Inexplicably, one of them was his son, by every measure a smart, witty, ambitious kid.”
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Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin
By Herb Boyd
Review by Janet Kinosian, February 2008
“Boyd admits upfront it's a narrow slice of James Baldwin history—specifically how Harlem plays into Baldwin's life and literary career—and it's a correct assessment. But the book is often too narrow for those who aren't Baldwinphiles.”
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Homecoming
By Bernhard Schlink
Review by Julia M. Klein, February 2008
“Schlink's prose is still crystalline, but his narrative is difficult and meandering, filled with clever reversals and postmodernist mirror effects. Art echoes life, which in turn echoes art, and often it is hard to disentangle the two.”
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Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See
By Bill Shapiro
February 2008
This collection of amorous missives—letters, notes, text messages—provides a glimpse into the love lives of strangers, and just may inspire you to pour your own heart out.
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The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life: Seniors Across America Offer Advice to the Next Generation
By Doug Meckelson and Diane Haithman
Review by Janet Kinosian, February 2008
“…it’s refreshing to see the no-nonsense advice of those 65 and older. Basically, the answers fall into two main categories: 1) don’t take yourself and your life so seriously, and 2) accept yourself from the inside out and everything outside will work itself out.”
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The Complete Book of Aunts
By Rupert Christiansen with Beth Brophy
January 2008
"Conventional or eccentric, nurturing or nasty, all types are represented in The Complete Book of Aunts. After reading this delightful celebration of the sometimes-forgotten family member, you'll never again take your own aunt for granted."
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The Eighth Promise: An American Son’s Tribute to His Toisanese Mother
By William Poy Lee
Review by Carol Simons, December 2007
“Told through two voices, mother and son, [The Eighth Promise] conveys the thoughts and experiences of a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant (FOB) and an American-born Chinese (ABC)....[It] is an unusual coming-of-age story, an insider’s look at the immigrant experience in the rough—yet joyful—world of San Francisco’s Chinatown.”
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Sage-ing While Age-ing
By Shirley MacLaine
Review by Ellen Kanner, December 2007
“Sage-ing While Age-ing is as scattershot, exuberant, and out there as the author herself…. The hook, if there is one, is MacLaine settling into her new Santa Fe home, reflecting on what she's done and where she's been.”
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The Complete Travel Detective Bible: The Consummate Insider Tells You What You Need to Know in an Increasingly Complex World
By Peter Greenberg
Review by Ken Budd, November 2007
“Peter Greenberg calls himself the Travel Detective, but that’s almost too modest. He’s more like the Eminent Travel Smart Guy Who Knows All.... A mix of enthusiastic Everyman and ultimate insider, [he] offers more than 600 pages of money-saving, stress-reducing, beat-the-system tips."
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Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
By Jonathan Gould
Review by Charlie Clark, November 2007
“Like the D minor 11th strum that ignites 'A Hard Day’s Night,' Gould should strike a chord with the generation whose identification with Beatledom is second nature.”
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A Free Life
By Ha Jin
Review by Julia M. Klein, November 2007
“The novel’s force derives from [its protagonist's] larger challenge—his quest, like that of every immigrant and perhaps the rest of us as well, to make his way in 'this lonesome, unfathomable, overwhelming land.' ”
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Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson
By Jann S. Wenner, Corey Seymour, and Johnny Depp
Review by Janet Kinosian, October 2007
“A biography in interview format that runs from Thompson’s Louisville childhood to his 2005 death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 67, Gonzo is an invigorating if often bizarre portrait of the eccentric Rolling Stone writer."
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Exit Ghost
By Philip Roth
Review by Julia M. Klein, October 2007
“Nathan Zuckerman, one of Roth’s recurring protagonists, is invariably described as the novelist’s alter ego, so there’s an especially poignant edge to Roth’s account of [his] declining powers. In Exit Ghost, the aging novelist has trotted out his most enduring character like an ailing thoroughbred for one final turn around the track.”
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The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By Susan Faludi
Review by Bill Lenderking, October 2007
"Faludi’s point—that demythologizing our history and achieving a deeper honesty about ourselves is urgent and necessary—is indisputable."
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The Almost Moon
By Alice Sebold
Review by Janet Kinosian, October 2007
“The book’s narrator, Helen Knightly, opens with the chilly lines: ‘When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.’ Not exactly warm introductory words…Yet [The Almost Moon] is a wonderful, often brilliant, if difficult book, and a highly nuanced read.”
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Elvis Is Titanic: Classroom Tales from the Other Iraq
By Ian Klaus
Review by Aaron Shulman, September 2007
"In combining memoir with a history of the region, as well as journalistic accounts of the situation in Iraq while he was there, [Klaus] dabbles in three forms of storytelling without achieving the unity or coherence of any one…nevertheless [the book] introduces the reader to an outstanding human being—the type of person this world needs more of.”
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Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity and Everything Else That Really Matters
By Anne Kreamer
Review by Janet Kinosian, September 2007
"[This] book's subject—how and why an entire generation of women got hoodwinked into believing that dying one’s hair equals forever youth—is just too good a conversation to ignore...Let’s hope it opens up a juicy debate."
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Ike: An American Hero
By Michael Korda
Review by Barry Hillenbrand, September 2007
"If the footnotes are anything to judge by, Korda drew most of his information from [Eisenhower's] memoirs and those of his friends. Yet although Korda did not bother diving into the archives, he successfully captures the mood of the times and the nature of the man in an easy-reading, albeit lengthy, book."
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Circling My Mother
By Mary Gordon
Review by Andrea Hoag, August 2007
"Turning the lens away from self—and back to parental figures—is becoming a trademark among boomer-age memoirists...And what a tour de force Gordon's homage proves to be!"
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Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Review by Wendy Smith, August 2007
Fancy anchovies on toast, mashed potatoes as a cure for heartbreak, eating asparagus with one's fingers…it's all here in this "diverse assemblage of writers singing the praises of meals created for a single person's enjoyment."
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Dancing With Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's
by Lauren Kessler
Review by Janet Kinosian, August 2007
"A quarter of the way through, you may wonder if you're reading the wrong book. The reason: it's an Alzheimer’s tale that’s warm, uplifting, even hopeful…This odd dichotomy—joy atop a ravaging disease—makes this book a refreshing standout."
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The Great Man
by Kate Christensen
Review by Sally Abrahms, August 2007
"The theme of sexuality among septuagenarians in literature is all too rare, and so is finding women in their 70s and 80s who cuss with gusto. But then, The Great Man defies convention."
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The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989
by Frederick Taylor
Review by Barry Hillenbrand, July 2007
"Aside from Oktoberfest and the World Cup, Germany is considered boring. But for more than a quarter of a century, Berlin was the dangerous crucible where the East and West faced off at very close quarters…[This book] reminds us how perilous those times were."
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Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven
by Susan Richards Shreve
Review by Julia M. Klein, July 2007
Shreve’s memoir “is an act of courage: an attempt to see clearly her stigmatizing illness, her own adolescent rebellion against it, and the devastating consequences of that rebellion on the boy she loved.”
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Project Everlasting: Two Bachelors Discover the Secrets of America's Greatest Marriages
by Mathew Boggs and Jason Miller
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, June 2007
The authors—a jaded bachelor and his commitment phobic childhood friend—journeyed across the United States on a quest to find out what makes a strong and enduring marriage, interviewing hundreds of couples as they went. Find out the good news and the bad news…
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The Maytrees
by Annie Dillard
Review by Mimi Kirk, June 2007
In this charming post-World War II love story, Toby Maytree abruptly ends the simple bohemian lifestyle he enjoyed with his wife Lou when he leaves her for another woman. Lou summons the courage to move on, but reveals the true strength of her character when Toby thrusts himself back into her life 20 years later.
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Cape Wind
by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb
Review by Jesse Kornbluth, June 2007
"Cape Wind tells a number of stories. It's a capsule history of real estate development on Cape Cod. A sprint through the business of electrical power in New England. A primer on wind power. But mostly it's the story of media and politics..."
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Divisadero
by Michael Ondaatje
Review by Ellen Kanner, May 2007
“Ondaatje began as a poet before turning to prose, and his poetic roots are evident here, not just in his dreamlike imagery and elegant language but in the novel’s deeply encoded, lush, layered structure.”
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Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
by David Talbot
Review by Bill Lenderking, May 2007
“Brothers offers a coherent thesis, a review of existing evidence, and many new and fascinating details, mostly gleaned by Talbot from interviews with principals still alive. The result is a compelling exposition of why and how JFK and RFK were killed and by whom.”
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver
Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
Review by Ellen Kanner, May 2007
"Will eating locally save the world? I wish it would. At the very least, reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Plenty has me hitting the farmers' market more often and saying no to long-distance produce."
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Without a Map
by Meredith Hall
Review by Wendy Smith, May 2007
When Meredith Hall became pregnant at age 16 in 1965, she was ostracized by her family and community. This heart-wrenching and beautifully written memoir shows how she emerged from years of suffering to become a stronger person.
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Grace Eventually: Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott
Review by Ellen Kanner, April 2007
“Lamott isn't afraid to bring up the bad old days here. She's willing to expose herself, and in doing so, exposes all our vulnerabilities, the whole untidy human condition. And she still finds reason to keep going.”
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The Father of All Things
by Tom Bissell
Review by Aaron Shulman, April 2007
“[This book] may herald the emergence of an important subgenre of Vietnam literature: the legacy narrative, written by the generation of children who grew up in the shadow of their father's memories and are now eager to explore this experience.”
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The Empty Nest
Karen Stabiner, Editor
Review by Lindsay Mergens, March 2007
“Thirty-one contributors—including such notables as Anna Quindlen, Harry Shearer, Ellen Levine, and Susan Shreve—describe ‘empty nest syndrome’ in essays that speak to the universality of this rite of passage and evoke every emotion in the spectrum.”
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Ten Days in the Hills
by Jane Smiley
Review by Andrea Hoag, March 2007
“In Ten Days in the Hills, Smiley cleverly borrows the narrative set-up of Boccaccio's Decameron to allow her readers to eavesdrop on a 10-day house party among members of Hollywood's second-string players.”
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Skylight Confessions
by Alice Hoffman
Review by Julia M. Klein, February 2007
"Beyond its literary distinction, Skylight Confessions is an engrossing read. Like the souls of Hoffman’s characters, who cling to those they love, her storytelling will hold you firmly in its grip."
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Something in the Air
by Marc Fisher
Review by Charlie Clark, February 2007
This blast from the past goes out "to all those baby boomers lurking in Listenerland. Unplug your iPod and hearken back to those teen years when you lay in bed with your ear glued to the muffled speaker of your Japanese transistor radio."
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Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?
by Sandra Gurvis
Review by Julia M. Klein, January 2007
In this collection of oral histories, Sandra Gurvis sets out to answer provocative questions about the present lives of older boomers who were deeply involved in the politics and cultural upheavals of the 1960s.
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The Great Risk Shift
by Jacob S. Hacker
Review by Bill Lenderking, January 2007
In his book, The Great Risk Shift, Jacob Hacker offers the layperson a “lucid and detailed primer on the economic problems that in his view threaten the security and well-being of most Americans.”
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What's Cookin': A Roundup of Cookbooks
Review by George Blooston, December 2006
There's something irresistible about cookbooks in winter, when holiday feasts and cooler weather encourage ambitious eating—or just ambitious dreaming. Heat up your culinary creativity with these recent titles.
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The Lay of the Land
by Richard Ford
Review by Bill Lenderking, November 2006
The third of a trilogy, The Lay of the Land continues to follow the life of New Jersey realtor Frank Bascombe, now 55, as he looks back on his dreams and disappointments.
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Thunderstruck
by Erik Larson
Review by Daniel Stashower, November 2006
In this gripping historical tale, Erik Larson skillfully weaves together the stories of the inventor Guglielmo Marconi and the villain of the infamous North London Cellar Murder of 1910, Dr. H. H. Crippen.
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Gridlock: Crossword Puzzles and the Mad Geniuses Who Create Them
by Matt Gaffney
Review by Allan Fallow, November 2006
The latest book about crossword puzzles as lifestyle—could have a more “accurate alternative subtitle, Cursed-Nerd Puzzles and the Monomaniacal Nebbishes Who Inflict Them on an Unsuspecting Populace.”
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Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
by Sena Jeter Naslund
Review by Barry Hillenbrand, October 2006
The latest book about Marie Antoinette—"filled with heaving breasts, deep sighs, and barely controlled passions"—connects readers with the fictionalized thoughts of the notorious queen.
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One Good Turn
by Kate Atkinson
Review by John F. Baker, October 2006
The author of the 2004 surprise hit Case Histories brings back retired detective Jackson Brodie in this novel "about disappointed middle-age people doing their best to come to terms with the way their lives have turned out."
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Gringos in Paradise
by Barry Golson
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, September 2006
A moving, often hilarious account of laying the foundation for retirement south of the border.
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read excerpt »
Doing Nothing
by Tom Lutz
Review by Allan Fallow, August 2006
American Idle: Tom Lutz sheds new light on the role of couch potatoes, loafers, and other good-for-nothing loungers in our society.
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Forgetfulness
by Ward Just
Review by Wendy Smith, August 2006
A 65-year-old portrait painter whose wife is murdered must choose between vengefulness and forgiveness.
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The Night Gardener
by George Pelecanos
Review by John F. Baker, July 2006
Three veteran cops, all wrestling with their own personal demons, are brought back together to work on an unsolved string of murders.
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Seven Loves
by Valerie Trueblood
Review by Wendy Smith, July 2006
A beautifully evocative novel about a woman whose thoughts return to the past and the people who have meant the most to her in her roles as daughter, wife, mother, and lover.
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The Last Days of Dead Celebrities
by Mitchell Fink
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, June 2006
Celeb-crazed readers will get their fix from this former gossip columnist’s look at the demise of 15 famous figures, including John Lennon and Orson Welles.
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Leaving Church
by Barbara Taylor Brown
Review by John F. Baker, June 2006
A boomer preacher’s conflicts about what it means to be a Christian lead her to a midlife career change.
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Catch a Wave
by Peter Ames Carlin
Review by Wendi Kaufman, May 2006
Carlin's account of the Wilson story is "a step above the standard rock
bio...a book that can be read on many levels, including cultural
history, psychological study, or even as a crash course in
ethnomusicology."
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Blow the House Down
by Robert Baer
Review by Allan Fallow, May 2006
Veteran CIA agent Baer is back, “spinning his tales as fiction, and fans of his earlier screeds will be happy to know that his bile remains at full boil” in this all-too-realistic thriller.
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Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away
by June Cross
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, April 2006
A former TV journalist tells what it was like growing up the daughter of a white mother and black father during the turbulent civil rights era.
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A Death in Belmont
by Sebastian Junger
Review by Julia M. Klein, April 2006
Sebastian Junger, the author of the bestseller The Perfect Storm, looks back at the Boston Strangler case of the ’60s through a compelling personal lens: the notorious murderer of women may have targeted Junger’s mother as a potential victim.
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This Book Will Save Your Life
by A. M. Homes
Review by Wendy Smith, March 2006
In this novel about a reclusive man's efforts to reconnect with the world—particularly his teenage son—Homes offers a tender story that will appeal to "anyone who has ever looked back, ever longed to redeem a mistake or reconcile with an estranged loved one."
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The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
by Tim Flannery
Review by Carmela Ciuraru, March 2006
We've seen the headlines about global warming. Now a world-renowned scientist explains the realities we face, the politics involved—and the steps we can take to protect our future.
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Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With ’50s Pop Music
by Karen Schoemer
Review by Jennifer Howard, March 2006
A fortysomething rock critic whose music gods are the Boss and R.E.M. learns to love the sentimental pop favorites of her parents' youth.
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2Do Before I Die: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Rest of Your Life
by Michael Ogden & Chris Day
Review by Allan Fallow, February 2006
A collection of life goals submitted by people from around the world, this mother of all to-do lists features both the mundane and the monumental, and plenty in between.
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Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable—Than Ever Before
By Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. (Free Press, 2006)
Review by Aaron Shulman, January 2006
Our 23-year-old reviewer finds that many of Twenge’s generalizations about his generation—the children of baby boomers born from 1970 to the end of the 20th century—ring true, but takes issue with her use of the word "miserable" to describe them.
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Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat
By Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle (Random House, 2006)
Review by Jennifer Howard, January 2006
It began with French Women Don’t Get Fat. Then came Mediterranean Women Stay Slim Too. Now, Naomi Moriyama places a human face to Japanese cuisine with secrets from her mother’s kitchen.
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Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response
by Aaron J. Klein (Random House, 2005)
Review by Jesse Kornbluth, December 2005
The world watched on TV as Israeli athletes were taken hostage, then murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the '72 Olympics. Klein’s account of the tragedy and Israel’s retaliation is a masterful thriller. The question is, how far should revenge go?
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A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan
By Nelofer Pazira (Free Press, September 2005)
Review by Wendy Smith, November 2005
In her lucid, intelligent memoir, Nelofer Pazira quietly reminds Western readers that even in the world's most war-torn regions, where extremism seems to grow from the blood-soaked soil, most people's hopes and fears are no different from ours. Though she grew up in Kabul during the years that saw a military coup and a Soviet invasion, Pazira's family would have been more or less at home in an American small town.
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The Last of Her Kind
By Sigrid Nunez (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, December 2005)
Eat the Document
By Dana Spiotta (Scribner, February 2006)
Review by John Baker, November 2005
The 1960s, and the remarkable upheavals in American society they ushered in, continue to fascinate, and these two very dissimilar novels plunge us back into the heart of their wildness, their mixture of hope and despair.
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Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
By Ian Urbina (Times Books/Henry Holt and Company, November 2005)
Review by Allan Fallow, November 2005
Cell-phone loudmouths, prying cashiers, public TVs: little blips on the radar screen of life bug Ian Urbina big-time. In this caustic and cathartic collection of revenge fantasies come true, the Washington, D.C.-based reporter for The New York Times takes a heartening look at human resourcefulness—and revenge—in the face of robotic corporations, voice-mail purgatory, and neighbors probing the extremes of loutish behavior.
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The Lost Painting
By Jonathan Harr (Random House, October 2005)
Review by Dennis Drabelle, November 2005
In his first book, A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr wrote long. To do justice to an epic lawsuit between the parent company of a chemical plant and residents of a Massachusetts town devastated by leukemia demanded every word of the book's 500 pages. Now, 10 years later, Harr has lightened up a bit. His second book, The Lost Painting, also features intense rivalries. But this time the stakes are less dire: the survival and health of an artwork, not a whole community.
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