Books
393 results
Page 35
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.
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.
Articles
3 minute read
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.
Articles
4 minute read
Barbara Streisand’s comeuppance
A Streisand hit, without Streisand
Playwright Jonathan Tolins has transformed the most narcissistic book ever written into a comic masterpiece.
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.
Articles
6 minute read
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.
Articles
3 minute read
"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?
Articles
6 minute read
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.
Articles
5 minute read
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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.
Articles
5 minute read
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?
Articles
4 minute read