Summer Books 2008: Excerpts

August 27, 2008 Late night television shows inject some humor into otherwise dry political situations — but is this necessarily a good thing? Russell L. Peterson tries to answer that question by analyzing the present media landscape.

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August 25, 2008 Natsuo Kirino's Out focuses four plucky women who support each other during times of crisis. A formulaic premise? Sure, if these were Manhattanites pining over shoes rather than assembly-line workers dealing with death and dismemberment.

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August 25, 2008 The Last Embrace works as literary film noir: There are bombshell babes, unsavory gangsters, and — of course — a grisly murder.

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August 25, 2008 Are rampant claims of discrimination clouding our discussions of social problems and race? Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford examines abuses of the so-called "race card" while looking at wider problems of institutional racism.

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August 25, 2008 Paris: the city of lights, the city of love, and — maybe most importantly — the city of food. Alexander Lobrano of Gourmet magazine samples the gastronomical delights of over a hundred Parisian restaurants, creating a guide that would satisfy any foodie.

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July 25, 2008 Horacio Castellanos Moya offers a "mesmerizing, darkly humorous" fictional take on Guatemala's political mayhem.

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July 17, 2008 Troy Patterson calls The Man Who Ate the World a "bouncy international survey of the haute-cuisine scene."

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July 14, 2008 Tim Winton's coming-of-age story paints a vivid portrait of a surfing town, depicting the ocean scenes with intricate detail.

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July 10, 2008 The delectably complicated plot revolves around Leroy "Chinese" Gordon and his group of antisocial pals who break into a UCLA professor's office in order to score some cocaine, but find, instead, detailed instructions for bringing a major urban city to its knees.

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July 10, 2008 This historical novel about the epic defeat of the Emperor Napoleon presents all the heroics and bloody loss of life of the battle of Waterloo — plus a romance between a strong-willed young woman and a dashing British Army officer.

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