Books

393 results
Page 35
A concern with the nature of identity and the process of memory.

Richard Burgin’s ‘Hide Island’

A vision of civilized savagery

In Richard Burgin's dark, dystopic vision, human society is mostly an arrangement for predators to seek their prey, and vice versa.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 6 minute read

Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Kraus Project’

Why was Karl Kraus so angry? Well, you’d angry too if….uh….

Karl Kraus, the Austrian playwright, editor and social critic, was little known to today’s English-speaking audience— until now. Thanks to the novelist and Kraus scholar Jonathan Franzen, the angry old man of German satire lives anew.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
Naive young men, protective older women.

Stephen King’s ‘Joyland’

How Stephen King pushes my buttons

By creating true-to-life characters and nostalgic narratives, Stephen King makes it easy for us to suspend our disbelief about the macabre events in his novels.
Terri Kirby Erickson

Terri Kirby Erickson

Articles 4 minute read
Would you buy a used dreamhouse from this woman?

Barbara Streisand’s comeuppance

A Streisand hit, without Streisand

Playwright Jonathan Tolins has transformed the most narcissistic book ever written into a comic masterpiece.
Myra Chanin

Myra Chanin

Articles 5 minute read

Saki's "Unrest-Cure': Lampooning Britain's upper class

The defeat of the smug and the boring

Every fan of satire knows Wilde and Wodehouse. But don't forget Saki, who introduced talking cats and child-hungry werewolves into upper-class British drawing rooms, on the theory that nothing invigorates a tea party like a ravening hyena.
Jake Blumgart

Jake Blumgart

Articles 6 minute read
What if I had lived with Indians?

Charles Whitecar Miskelly's "The Cape'

Whites and Indians in 17th-Century New Jersey

More than 70 years after it was handwritten by a shipbuilder and chicken farmer, a fantasy vision of New Jersey's earliest settlers has surfaced.
Jackie Schifalacqua

Jackie Schifalacqua

Articles 3 minute read
Mary Morgan wasn't sexy, but where would we be without her?

"Rocket Girl': Forgotten woman engineer

She rescued Wernher von Braun (who couldn't remember her name)

Rocket Girl turns the spotlight on a forgotten heroine of America's space program. But was she forgotten because she was a woman, or because she was an engineer?
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 6 minute read
A woman waiting for a stronger light.

Miriam Kotzin's 'The Body's Bride'

One woman's betrothals and betrayals

In an age when formal verse is out of favor, Miriam Kotzin works mostly in traditional forms. Her meters scan; her lines most often rhyme. This collection s tautly unified around the central theme and image of the female body in all the stages and conditions of life.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 5 minute read

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Why do so many comic book artists cluster in Portland?

Why was 'The Big Sort' overlooked?

The tribalizing of America

A five-year-old book offers an explanation for Americans' contemporary divisiveness that's still relevant. Yet I haven't met a single person who's heard of it, much less actually read it.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 5 minute read
The ancient Greeks explored the unknown world with their senses; we do it with our minds.

The lure of science fiction: an insider's view

On the shores of unexplored seas: Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Do readers turn to science fiction because they're bored? Or because it offers a vision of the future universe that only our minds can comprehend?
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read