Books | Book Reviews
- Jump-start your summer reading with the 10 best books of MayThe 10 best books of May give you an early start on porch-swing, beach, and vacation reading.
- ‘Lessons From My Teachers’ praises the art of learning, in school and outPlaywright Sarah Ruhl reflects on the people in her life who taught by example. She also credits her children with teaching her how to slow down.
- ‘The Emperor of Gladness’ walks a tightrope between despair and hopeVietnamese American novelist and poet Ocean Vuong builds moments of tenderness and heartache that flow among his characters like a river.
- Mark Twain’s legacy is not his tall tales. It’s his larger-than-life persona.Mark Twain gave us inimitable characters such as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He was no less creative in styling himself as America’s first celebrity.
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- How Eadweard Muybridge solved a riddle of movement with his cameras“Muybridge,” a thoughtful graphic biography of the 19th-century inventor, delves into his life and his experiments with sequential photography.
- Three novels strike at the heart of devastating legaciesA trio of novels translated from Indonesian, Arabic, and French exposes the harmful effects of prejudice and corruption.
- America’s 13 Colonies didn’t fight the Revolution by themselvesIn “Shots Heard Round the World,” John Ferling argues that substantial – and secret – aid from France helped the colonists triumph over Britain.
- Skulduggery among the heirloom tomatoes in ‘The Fact Checker’A madcap mystery novel riffs on two New York institutions: the fact-checking department of a New Yorker-like magazine and the city’s farmers markets.
- Spring’s great reads have sprung! Here are April’s 10 best.April’s 10 best books range from short stories set in LA to a climate-change novel to a reappraisal of the American Revolution and its effects on other countries.
- Whodunits with history: Those were the slays!Our roundup of mysteries includes Jay Gatsby’s (invented) sister and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as detectives. Retirees and conspiracies abound.
- The quiet voice of Emily Brontë was anything but tame“Fifteen Wild Decembers” by novelist Karen Powell shows the depth of creativity shared among the talented Brontë siblings, as narrated by Emily.
- A fuller portrait of artist-provocateur Yoko OnoDavid Sheff reappraises Yoko Ono’s role, as an artist in her own right and as a support to John Lennon, with whom she collaborated on “Imagine.”
- The 10 best books of March come in like a lionMarch’s 10 best books deliver drama, danger, and determination, from a novel set on a subantarctic island to a biography that reappraises Yoko Ono.
- One night to resolve all matters of the heartBen Okri emphasizes abstract ideas over nuanced characters in the farce “Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted.”
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- A blast from finals past, blue books enjoy a resurgence in an AI world
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