archive
Hemon's 'The Book Of My Lives': Finding Beauty In Sarajevo's Scars
March 19, 2013 Aleksandar Hemon's first book of nonfiction, The Book of My Lives, is a collection of essays about a shifting sense of home and displacement. Reviewer Ben Percy says these stories, which balance despair with hope and anger with humor, slashed through his defenses.
Television
A Measured Look At Roth As The Writer Turns 80
March 19, 2013 The celebration of Philip Roth's career reaches its peak in a new documentary — Philip Roth Unmasked — that will screen on PBS next week as part of the American Masters series. There's no doubt that Roth is a master, and not just an American one, but the film tiptoes around the novelist's dark ferocity.
Author Interviews
Veterans Face Red Tape Accessing Disability, Other Benefits
March 19, 2013 On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges American service members face in accessing disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.
The Two-Way
Book News: Honolulu, Chicago Campaign To Host Obama's Presidential Library
March 19, 2013 Also: English town may ban apostrophes on street signs; feminist romance novels; and Marie Ponsot wins the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Book Reviews
In Memoir Of Child's Death, A Mother Seeks Meaning
March 19, 2013 Emily Rapp lived every parent's nightmare when her infant son was diagnosed with a fatal disease. The Still Point of the Turning World is not only a powerful memoir of a mother's endurance but also a meditation on how our mortality should inspire us all to live life ferociously in the present.
First Reads
Exclusive First Read: 'All That Is' By James Salter
March 19, 2013 Read an exclusive excerpt of All That Is by James Salter. Salter is often considered a "writer's writer"; his latest, All That Is, follows a World War II veteran through a series of drunken conversations and romantic liasons as he returns home and gets involved in the New York publishing world.
The Salt
'Drunken Botanist' Takes A Garden Tour Of The Liquor Cabinet
March 19, 2013 An incredible diversity of grains, herbs and fruits goes into the world's alcoholic drinks, as writer Amy Stewart explains. Her new book describes the plants behind cocktails and other boozy beverages and features drink recipes and growing instructions.
Author Interviews
'FDR And The Jews' Puts A President's Compromises In Context
March 18, 2013 President Franklin D. Roosevelt said little and did less on behalf of Jews trying to get out of Nazi Germany; but he also won Jewish votes by landslide margins and led the Allies to victory in World War II. A new history by Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman revises FDR's performance upward.
New In Paperback
March 18-24: True Tales From Haiti, Paris, Early Christendom And Hitler's Germany
March 18, 2013 Julia Alvarez's story of a promise kept, Alice Kaplan's account of three American women in Paris, Bart D. Ehrman's inquiry into the identity of Jesus, and Andrew Nagorski's survey of Americans who witnessed Hitler's ascent arrive in paperback.
Author Interviews
'Still Point': A Meditation On Mothering A Dying Child
March 18, 2013 In 2011, Emily Rapp's baby was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic, degenerative condition with no cure. He died just shy of his third birthday. In her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, Rapp writes about what it's like to care for a terminally ill child.
The Two-Way
Book News: Anger After Chicago School District Removes 'Persepolis'
March 18, 2013 The graphic memoir about growing up in revolutionary Iran has been pulled from 7th grade classrooms. Also: An "obituary" for Philip Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman; the resurgence of independent bookstores; and the best books coming out this week.
Author Interviews
Famine Ship Jeanie Johnston Sailed Through Grim Odds
March 17, 2013 In the mid-19th century, more than a million Irish fled the potato famine in search of a better life. But the fate they met aboard so-called "coffin ships" headed to the New World was often as bad as what they left behind. Not so for those lucky enough to find their way onto one ship. Kathryn Miles tells the story in her book, All Standing.
Author Interviews
Tsunami Delivers A Young Diarist's 'Tale' Of Bullying And Depression
March 17, 2013 In Ruth Ozeki's new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, a 16-year-old girl in Japan starts a diary, writing that it will be a record of her last days before she commits suicide, and gets an unexpected reader when that diary washes up in Canada.
Author Interviews
Reminder: Our Memories Are Less Reliable Than We Think
March 17, 2013 "Memory is about the present as much as it is about the past," psychologist Charles Fernyhough writes in Pieces of Light. The book explores the science of memory to figure out what shapes it, how it works and why some things stick with us forever.
You Must Read This
'The Quick And The Dead': Parables Of Doom And Merry Rapture
March 17, 2013 Joy Williams' The Quick and the Dead, about three motherless girls traveling through the desert, left author Domenica Ruta with more questions than answers. Do you have a favorite book that left you confused — in a good way? Tell us in the comments.
