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Great reads from past year 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-23

TAKE a look at the top English language books in 2011 that had people talking. They range from daring novels and intellectual arguments to deeply moving memoirs. FICTION AND POETRY 1.THE ANGEL ESMERALDA: Nine...

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Austen fans will approve 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-16

ASPIRING writers, take heart: One of the most beloved novels of all time was rejected when it was fluttered in front of publishers in 1797 - or so the historical record suggests. Called "First Impressions," it was...

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Memoir shows two Rices 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-9

THEY were an unlikely pair: the cerebral A-student from a striving black family and the son of privilege who as a candidate for president couldn't name Pakistan's military ruler. But together they forged a vision...

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'Love' gets into your head 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-9

"LOVE and Shame and Love:" It looks more like a line of free-form, possibly adolescent poetry than the title of a novel, with the repeated "love" trying to buffer the fragile "shame"-filled center. Then again, that...

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Diane Keaton dishes some dirt 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-2

DIANE Keaton is admired for her ease in performing the difficult and for making the sensible glamorous. She minted a wildly original style of dressing while moviegoers were just learning her name. For three and a half...

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Delicious take on food and taste 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-2

THE three subjects in its subtitle are sure to propel Adam Gopnik's new essay collection, "The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food" stockingward. But a word of advice to those seeking a book...

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Hard-hitting biography on Cosell 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-2

ONCE upon a time, Howard Cosell roamed television draped in the canary-colored blazer of ABC Sports, smoking a cigar the length of a sequoia, covering his baldness with a toupee the size of a featherweight boxer and...

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The unusual life of a tomb robber 

Sunday | Book
2011-12-2

HIS introduction to the wonders of the ancient world could hardly have been less auspicious. While in Cairo in the summer of 1815, awaiting an audience with Mohammed Ali Pasha, Turkish viceroy of Egypt, the Italian...

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In defense of the maligned West 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-25

THIS is a difficult time in which to present an account - and what amounts to a defense - of the West's rise to pre-eminence and its unequaled influence in shaping the world today. The West is on the defensive, challenged...

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Solid account of war in Pacific 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-25

AT times during the months after the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, a tall, patrician-looking, Japanese-speaking American could be seen puffing on his pipe and pacing the concrete floor behind an unmarked basement...

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'Ghost Lights' takes inward glance 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-25

AT a glance, 2011 seems to have been a banner year for the Internal Revenue Service in fiction. It began with "The Pale King," David Foster Wallace's orphaned novel about employees at an Illinois branch of the organization....

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Satisfying look at irrationality 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-25

IN 2002, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economic science. What made this unusual - indeed, unique in the history of the prize - is that Kahneman is a psychologist. Specifically, he is one-half of a pair of...

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First lady's life never comes alive 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-18

IT was the vice presidency that John Nance Garner invidiously compared to a bucket of warm spit, but the role of first lady of the United States has got to be just as bad. Only Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton...

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Juicy portrait of Catherine the Great 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-18

HOW delightful to discover that Robert K. Massie, 82 years old, hasn't lost his mojo. At a heft befitting its subject, his long-awaited "Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman" is a consistently nimble and buoyant...

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Fun look at world of mushrooms 

Sunday | Book
2011-11-18

HEDGEHOGS, fairy clubs, hawk's wings and candy caps: These are just a gladeful of the fungal eruptions that have captivated Eugenia Bone, the intrepid author of one of the most beguiling books I've read this year....