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The seamy underbelly of big-time youth basketball 

Feature | Literature
2011-1-4

FOR eight years, Sports Illustrated investigative reporter George Dohrmann immersed himself in the lives of AAU coach Joe Keller and his team of 10- and 11-year-olds. He had exclusive access and promised he wouldn't...

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Private letters of chef Julia Child 

Feature | Literature
2011-1-4

"AS Always, Julia" is an epistolary love story, a romance that began with a fan letter and the gift of a paring knife. The letter was to the writer and historian Bernard DeVoto, who had written in Harper's about impossibly...

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The seamy underbelly of big-time youth basketball 

Feature | Literature
2011-1-4

FOR eight years, Sports Illustrated investigative reporter George Dohrmann immersed himself in the lives of AAU coach Joe Keller and his team of 10- and 11-year-olds. He had exclusive access and promised he wouldn't...

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President's leading ladies 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-19

THOMAS Jefferson has often been described as an enigma. He was a slave owner who declared that all men are created equal. Despite insisting that he had no political ambition, he spent much of his life in politics....

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Trials of travel reveal sad reality of life 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-19

FOR Damon, the white South African protagonist of "In a Strange Room," travel is a mostly pleasureless compulsion. In each of the three linked stories that make up this novel, he moves from place to place "in acute...

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The New York Times Hardcover best-sellers 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-19

FICTION 1. PORT MORTUARY, by Patricia Cornwell. (Putnam, US$27.95) A young man's mysterious death causes trouble. 2. THE CONFESSION, by John Grisham. (Doubleday, US$28.95) A criminal tries to save...

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Chilling fate for penguins 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-12

IN the austral summer of 2005-06, the veteran magazine journalist Fen Montaigne traveled to Palmer Station in Antarctica to work with the highly regarded polar ecologist Bill Fraser. For nearly five months, Montaigne...

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Young Brit's bleak tale of an old China 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-12

CHINA, 1946: the Japanese occupation is over, and the people of Fushun, Liaoning Province, are wondering when prosperity will return. But 16-year-old Yuying is anticipating the answer to her own big question - what...

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Literally lost in translation 

Feature | Literature
2010-12-10

CHINA'S growing appetite for Western fiction means plenty of work for translators. But pay is low and professional translators are scarce, so a lot is lost in translation. Yao Min-G turns the page. China's passion...

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How the big cat thinks 

Feature | Literature
2010-10-10

THE large and malevolent tiger at the center of this nonfiction hunting tale bears a striking resemblance to fictional seafaring predecessors. The structure of John Vaillant's book echoes that of "Moby-Dick,"...

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Find escapism in slavery tale 

Feature | Literature
2010-10-10

IMMERSED in factual nuance, exacting about sequence and presentation, the historian never steps to the side in his work to register amazement at circumstance. Instead, he aims to recreate a world that quietly overtakes...

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Spirituality guru reimagines life of the last Prophet 

Feature | Literature
2010-10-3

COUNTLESS books have been written about the life of Muhammad, Islam's prophet. Spirituality guru Deepak Chopra has added another to the mix: A novel generally rooted in facts but liberally embellished. In "Muhammad:...

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New look at morality 

Feature | Literature
2010-10-3

SAM Harris heads the youth wing of the New Atheists. "The End of Faith," his blistering take-no-prisoners attack on the irrationality of religions, found him many fans and, not surprisingly, a great body of detractors. ...

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Postcard from another life 

Feature | Literature
2010-9-12

PAUL Valery said that a poet is like a man who carries huge weights up to a roof and drops them all at once on the head of a passerby. With her first novel, "This Must Be the Place," Kate Racculia has climbed to the...

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A tale of survival from the wilds of the Bronx 

Feature | Literature
2010-9-12

GRAHAM Greene once said that writers should keep a chip of ice in their hearts. It's sound advice, with exceptions. Despite her generous portrayal of her troubled family life, Liz Murray succeeds as an author. Few...