Who's Your Buddha?
Howard W. French : China
A collection of oral histories reveal a new understanding of the modern Chinese experience.
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Speak Again, Memory
Greg Grandin : Books
Readers of Fidel Castro's My Life will find explanations of the Cuban Revolution, but no apologies for its suppression of dissent.
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The Creep of Things
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow : Environment
Two new anthologies explore the virtues and occasional shortcomings of Bill McKibben's quest for environmental salvation.
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Hello Cruel World
John Palattella : Journalists & Journalism
The narrative journalism of David Samuels finds conversation, color and conflict in the vortex of American life.
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The American Way of Spying
Spencer Ackerman : US Intelligence/Covert Ops
The history of American intelligence-gathering is rife with incompetence, dysfunction and contempt toward legislative oversight.
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The Novelist and the Murderers
Nathaniel Popper : Guatemala
Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder sparks calls for accountability in Central America's "kingdom of impunity."
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The Long Life of the Frontier Mullah
Basharat Peer : Islam & Muslims
The history of Pakistan's border regions remains an unruly captive of the imperial "Great Game."
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Beyond Belief
Jeff Sharlet : Religion
Can the wall between church and state balance the principles of neutrality and accomodation?
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The Power Conundrum
Michael Massing : US Foreign Policy
After railing against non-violent intervention in the face of genocide, Samantha Power rethinks her stand.
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Boxed In
Peter C. Baker : Electoral Reform
Electoral reform in the United States will require federal intervention to empower voters and overcome the challenges posed by state and local autonomy.
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Sweet Martin's Badass Song
Scott Saul : History
Several new books on Martin Luther King take a closer look at the rhetoric and economic politics of the civil rights icon.
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A Deeper Black
Ta-Nehisi Coates : Barack Obama
Shelby Steele's book on Barack Obama, an outdated critique of identity politics, misses the candidate's essential power.
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Lost Causes Not Yet Found
Kevin M. Kruse : Civil Rights Movement
In Defying Dixie, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore seeks to reclaim the radical origins of the modern civil rights struggle.
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Hearts and Minds
Thomas J. Sugrue : Civil Rights Movement
Is there more to racism in America than intolerance and immorality? Four books shed light.
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Arms and the Right
Daniel Lazare : Guns & Gun Control
Two books dissect the contentious, confusing debate over gun control and the frequently misinterpreted Second Amendment.
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The Experts Speak on Iraq
Victor Navasky & Christopher Cerf : Iraq War
To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, some daily inspiration from the experts who led us there.
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Windows Into the Night
Marcela Valdes : Essays
The collected nonfiction of Roberto Bolaño is a treasure trove filled with straw and dust, jewels and gold.
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Truth and Consequences
Amy Alexander : Autobiography & Memoir
Who's more to blame in the Love and Consequences hoax: the faux ghetto girl or the credulous book editors and reviewers who so eagerly snapped up her story?
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Shadowplays
Neve Gordon : Middle East
In a pair of groundbreaking books, Israeli historian Hillel Cohen explores the thorny issue of Palestinian collaboration with Zionists.
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Two Angry Men
Robert Perkinson : Law & Justice
Beyond the sensationalism and the sound bites, the Duke rape case reveals the perils of unchecked prosecutorial power.
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Banana Kings
Emily Biuso : Agriculture
The history of banana cultivation is rife with labor and environmental abuse, corporate skulduggery and genetic experiments gone awry.
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Good Faith
Daniel Lazare : Religion
Two authors posit very different views on the problem of religious conflict in a supposedly secular age.
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Fourteen Little Words
Victor Navasky : 1st Amendment
First Amendment biographer Anthony Lewis brings glad tidings: despite Bush, US commitment to free speech "is no longer in doubt."
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Chávez's Fix
Daniel Wilkinson : Venezuela
Is Venezuela's president undoing his country's experiment in democracy?
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Revolutionary States
Ronald Grigor Suny : Russia
Two new books take a closer look at the "Soviet monster" in an age of lazy, anti-Communist rhetoric.
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The Ice Forge
Jochen Hellbeck : Russia
The generation that came of age in Stalin's Russia was torn between perpetual fear and profound emotional investment in the Soviet ideal.
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The Big Yam
John Feffer : China
Chinese hearts, minds and pocketbooks get a lot of attention from the Eastern and Western consumer markets.
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New Old Things
Frances Richard : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
A new collection of short pieces by the prodigious and wide-ranging critic Luc Sante doubles as a history of Modernism's outlaws.
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Rambling Man
Mark Mazower : Europe
A modern-day Rip Van Winkle challenges the view that Europeans are too wrapped up in their past to move on.
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On the Books
Ted Conover : Crime
A "rogue sociologist" gains unprecedented insight on the day-to-day workings of a Chicago gang.
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A Great Deal of Work
George Scialabba : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
Edmund Wilson's politics have long been criticized, but his views were more nuanced than you might think.
2007
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Western Promises
From the archive: A book by a former ICTY official offers a vivid insider's account of realpolitik at the Milosevic trial.
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The Secret Library of Hope
Twelve authors on war and peace, dissent, the environment and the empowerment of the poor provide inspiration to transform the world in 2008.
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Lippmann and the News
Michael Schudson : Media Analysis
In the early 1900s Walter Lippman laid the groundrules for public debate in America. Have the US media followed his prescriptions?
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Orwelled
Peter C. Baker : Media Analysis
A recent collection of essays brings George Orwell into the new millennium.
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Pointe Work
Nureyev: The Life brings new focus to an iconic figure of modern ballet.
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The Nijinsky of Ambivalence
Morris Dickstein : Peace Activism
During a Vietnam War protest, Norman Mailer blustered and banged a generation's experience through his prodigious ego.
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A Colder War
Jonathan Schell : Arms Spending & Proliferation
Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly, sequel to the book that defined the atomic age, captures the political struggle that brought it to an end.
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Underworlds
Gangsters have guns and muscle, but a good writer always gets the last word.
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Studs's People
For Studs Terkel, the touchstone is memory and speech the stuff of which his art is made.
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Triumph of the Wills
A new apologia for Anglo-Saxon noblesse oblige needs a reality check.
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Come On, People
Amy Alexander : African-Americans
A new book by Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint is a tough-love prescription for social change. Why are critics in the black community piling on?
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The View From Jantar Mantar
The contradictions of parliamentary democracy in India have been a constant source of struggle and rich debate.
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Shanker Blows Up the World
The life and legacy of a fiery New York teachers' advocate gets caught in the crossfire of a changing liberal landscape.
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The Imperfectionist
Reconsidering the life and legacy of avant-garde artist and poet Francis Picabia.
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Apocalypse Now?
Stephen Holmes : War on Terrorism
According to Chalmers Johnson, Bush's imperial presidency may be the final chapter in the collapse of American democracy.
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Sound Check
The history of twentieth-century music charts the rise of modern masters like Duke Ellington and John Adams.
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Lobbying Degree Zero
Moral mudslinging has stifled debate over the Israel lobby.
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Jessica Valenti: Full Frontal Feminism
Molly Bennett : Feminism & Women
A conversation with the author and Feministing.com founder about why the next wave of feminist activism will take place online.
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Class Acts
J. Hoberman : Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left
The left's literary canon has neglected the contributions less-celebrated writers have made to the political significance of literature.
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Getting Away With Murder
The brutal murder of a bishop and its violent aftermath exemplify post-civil war Guatemala's descent into chaos
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Perishable Goods
A new biography of economist Joseph Schumpeter explores his insights into the emerging world of globalized capitalism.
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Silent Witness
A batch of new books on Hurricane Katrina investigate who is to blame for the tragedy.
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An Inconvenient Truth
In 1988 US officials helped disguise Saddam's chemical attack on Halabja. But when it came time to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they acted outraged.
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Kings of the Road
Two big literary anniversaries: Jack London's forgotten gem The Road turns 100, and Jack Kerouac's On the Road hits 50.
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The Iranian Impasse
Janet Afary & Kevin B. Anderson : Islam & Muslims
Five new books explore the failed progressive movements in Iran, and the dilemma the US left faces today.
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Persian Ghosts
Chris Toensing : Islam & Muslims
The complex historical tensions between Sunnis and Shiites are not enough to explain the current crisis in the Middle East.
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Chinese Mirrors
China has become like Israel: No matter the party, no matter the leader, the US government will defend its actions.
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Smells Like Teen Spirit
Teenage presents a lively but scattershot portrait of youth in the modern era.
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The State of Zionism
Brian Klug : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Tracing the course of Zionism and the splintered state it has created.
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The Doctor Stories
Atul Gawande offers up a banal self-help manual for aspiring MDs, while Pauline Chen prescribes a dose of compassion.
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An African Solution
Two new books on the AIDS epidemic in Africa suggest that the best treatment may be found in the continent's own social movements.
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Stop Making Sense
A 1920s Russian literary movement celebrating experimental narratives and absurdism never survived Stalin's reign.
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Why It Happened the Way It Did
Ian Kershaw's latest work analyzes ten decisions that shaped the outcome of World War II.
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The New Face of Warfare
Child soldiering has become a defining feature of modern warfare. And the United States has been all too complicit in the trend.
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Among the Disbelievers
In their rush to throw out God, atheist writers appear to have given little thought to what should replace Him.
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Infantile Liberalism
In a new book on consumer culture, Benjamin Barber argues that commercialism encourages adults to behave like children.
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Roads to Freedom
David L. Chappell : Civil Rights & Liberties
A rich crop of new books offers fresh insight into the ongoing struggle for civil rights in America.
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Mission Impossible
Three Empires on the Nile, a lively retelling of Britain's colonial exploits in Africa, conjures up images of wild-eyed Arabs waging jihad in the desert.
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Inevitable Revolutions
In William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal, the 1857 Uprising against British rule in India is recast as a cross-border friendship gone sour.
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The Semiwarriors
Andrew J. Bacevich : War & Peace
By creating an atmosphere of perpetual crisis, Presidents have expanded their powers and hidden their actions from the public eye.
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On the Genealogy of Morals
Inventing Human Rights traces the roots of humanitarian concern back to the eighteenth century. But there's a world of difference between then and now.
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Veiled Intolerance
Richard Wolin : Islam & Muslims
A batch of new books describe how European governments have dealt with Muslim immigrants and citizens since 9/11.
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The Spoils of Indian Democracy
Two new books show how perceptions of India have been shaped and distorted by rhapsodic portrayals of its business elite.
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Sect Symbols
To understand why the playground of Beirut has again become a battleground, look beyond the myth-making biographies of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
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Remembrance: Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Polish writer who died January 23 chronicled coups and revolutions with eloquence and compassion; empathy was his most potent journalistic tool.
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Party Politics
Dancing in the Streets is a history of outbreaks of collective joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead.
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Savage Wars of Peace
Ruth Scurr reviews The First Total War, a study of Napoleonic France that illuminates the causes of all-out war.
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My Beef With Vegetarianism
Daniel Lazare : Food & Nutrition
The Bloodless Revolution explores four centuries of arguments for vegetarianism, from good health to fascist politics.
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Self-Consciousness Raising
Martin Duberman : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
What is the self? Do we all have one? Is it best treated with Botox or with books? Bohemian Los Angeles explains it all.
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The Work Cut Out for Us
George Scialabba : Democratic Party
Eight books explore the right-wing assault on American politics and chart a course for a Democratic resurgence.
2006
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Parasites of Plunder?
Richard J. Evans : World War II
Hitler's Beneficiaries advances a controversial, deeply flawed argument that Germans failed to revolt against the Nazis because Hitler established a welfare state built on plunder.
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Waltzing With Warlords
Five years after the United States ousted the Taliban, optimism about Afghanistan's future is evaporating. Three new books shed light on what went wrong.
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In Palestine, a Dream Deferred
Bashir Abu-Manneh : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Two new books explore fundamental Palestinian and Israeli concerns: The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi considers the Palestinians' failure to achieve sovereignty, and One Country by Ali Abunimah puts forth a moral case for binationalism.
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I Can't Get No Satisfaction
Christine Smallwood : Feminism & Women
Laura Kipnis's The Female Thing takes women to task for perpetuating the notion that they're vulnerable.
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A Civilizing Mission
Amitava Kumar : Activism & Organizing
The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad collects the work of one of our finest postcolonialist critics.
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The Business of America
George Scialabba : US Foreign Policy
The American Way of Strategy and Empire's Workshop examine the paradox of idealism and brutality in US foreign policy.
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The New World Order
Two new books examine the diverse and ambitious alliances that led to the end of slavery in America.
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French Lessons
The history of twentieth-century France depicts a struggle between the republican ideal of a unitary state and the shifting concerns of a pluralistic society.
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Legal Legacy
Herman Schwartz : Supreme Court
Four new books explore the impact of Bush appointees on the newly politicized Supreme Court and the power they wield over our public and private lives.
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My Friend, the Enemy
Roane Carey : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree is a novelistic account of two intertwined lives, one Palestinian and one Jewish, and a house with two histories.
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Tavis Smiley's Covenant
Amy Alexander : African-Americans
Journalist, activist, philanthropist and self-promoter, Tavis Smiley has the political clout and the ability to energize and educate the black community in the best tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.
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Eat Drink Man Woman
Matthew DeBord : Food & Nutrition
Three new books by Julia Child, Anthony Bourdain and Bill Buford chart the evolution of American cooking, from haute cuisine to the hot kitchen of Mario Batali.
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A Sort of Homecoming
Hazel Rowley : African-Americans
"The spell of Africa is upon me," wrote W.E.B. Du Bois in Liberia. Three new books document the enchantment and disenchantment of the continent for its descendants.
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Inside the Alleged Mind of Bill O'Reilly
Joseph Minton Amann & Tom Breuer : Humor
Looking for a blast of hot air? Two intrepid literary critics venture deep into the steaming, muddy jungles of the Fox News pundit's award-losing prose.
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Journals of the Purge Years
Revolution on My Mind is a new analysis of personal diaries written in the shadow of Stalin.
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Questions for Katha Pollitt
Emily Amick : Feminism & Women
Katha Pollitt answers questions about feminism, politics and her new book, Virginity or Death! And Other Pressing Social Issues of Our Times.
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Empire as a Way of Life
Two new histories of British imperial rule in India take the narrow view. In fact, the scandal of empire can be isolated neither to Europe nor to the past.
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Legal Weapon
Martha Nussbaum : Feminism & Women
International law offers protection to the oppressed. In Are Women Human?, feminist legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon exposes the hypocrisy of not extending the same protection to women.
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The American Political Tradition
Andrew J. Bacevich : Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left
American foreign policy is shaped by a myth of national righteousness. In two new books, Peter Beinart abuses history to suggest liberals embrace this myth, while Stephen Kinzer uses America's history of involvement in foreign coups to reveal why we cannot.
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How to Create a Liberal Bestseller
Jennifer Nix : Internet & New Media
Progressives can take a lesson from the success of "How Would a Patriot Act?" Mobilize the liberal blogosphere and take an obscure book for a ride on the bestseller list.
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Who's Really Screwing America
Right-wing nutcase Bernard Goldberg may think he has a lock on who's messing up the Republic, but consider Dan Brown, Joe Franklin, Tucker Carlson...
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Heat Wave
As the planet warms and global catastrophe beckons, what changes are we willing to make to adjust to a brave new world? Tim Flannery and Elizabeth Kolbert seek answers in two provocative new books.
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Anatomy of a Murder
David Bradley : Racism & Discrimination
Cynthia Carr's Our Town seeks to uncover hidden truths about a 1930 lynching in small-town Indiana. But Carr fails to break the code of silence that many of the town's inhabitants, including her grandparents, took to the grave.
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From Piety to Politics
Mahmood Mamdani : Islam & Muslims
Three new books examine the distinctions between religious and political Islam.
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Experimental Art
Alan Lightman makes scientists into artists in his new book The Discoveries, promoting original journal articles as "the great novels and symphonies of science."
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Crowds and Power
In Death in the Haymarket James Green uses the story of the Haymarket riot to expose the hopes and fears of nineteenth-century America, a nation living on the knife-edge of social catastrophe.
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Just Us
David Oshinsky : Race, Ethnicity & Religion
Three books examine American history through the scope of racism and racial identity.
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Pity the Region
Augustus Richard Norton : Middle East
Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization criticizes a self-righteous US foreign policy oblivious to the power of retributive justice in the Middle East.
2005
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Farewell to the Working Class
Austin Kelley : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
Two new books on indolence, How To Be Idle and Bonjour Laziness, issue low-energy cries for political apathy, a shorter work week and the fine art of slacking off.
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Studs Terkel on Music
Still going strong at 93, Studs Terkel has produced yet another oral history, And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey.
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Nancy Has Two Mommies
Brenda Wineapple : Feminism & Women
Nancy Drew has been a fixture in young girls' lives since 1930. But the continuing appeal of this spunky American icon--never sad, wrinkled or misunderstood--is both heartwarming and a little scary.
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Letter of the Law
America's Constitution: A Biography examines America's obsession with the Constitution--its origins, evolution and interpretation.
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The Chosen People
Daniel Lazare : Judaism & Jews
The Jewish Century defies the conventional view of Jews as outsiders and traces their symbiotic relationship with Christians. A History of the Jews in the Modern World follows the impact the multitude of journeys that Diaspora Jews have taken on countries in the modern era.
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The Secret History of Rum
Long before oil dominated geopolitics, rum was the original global commodity, tying Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean in a complex web of trade and credit. And Bacardi was the original multinational.
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The Ring Cycle
When Joe Louis defeated Nazi sympathizer Max Schmeling in 1938, it was the boxing match that reverberated across the world. Three new books chronicle the match and all the racial and political turmoil of which it was an emblem.
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The World According to Dowd
Katha Pollitt : Feminism & Women
Maureen Dowd has done her best to declare feminism dead. But by insisting that men are scared of spunky successful women, it doesn't occur to her that she is promoting, rather than reporting on, the problem she describes.
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The True Story of Equiano
Robin Blackburn : African-Americans
Vincent Carretta's Equiano, the African is the complex narrative of a Carolina slave who bought his freedom, married an English woman and published a memoir on his life as a seafarer and gentleman.
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The Power of Fear
Jill Lepore's New York Burning paints a realistic portrait of a purported slave rebellion in 1741 and the hysteria that followed, a harrowing lesson of how abusers of power become haunted by the nightmare of retribution.
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The War of the Liberals
Power and the Idealists clings to the notion that the Iraq War was waged for humanitarian ideals, while At the Point of a Gun documents the inner torment of humanitarian interventionists who, without forgetting Rwanda and Bosnia, have gazed into the Iraqi abyss.
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Over My Dead Body
New biographies of Benito Mussolini and Marilyn Monroe contemplate exploitation of the body--in life and after death.
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The American Political Tradition
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln expertly balances the roots of a political revolution: the impact of a few key leaders and the lives and aspirations of ordinary citizens engaging with the government for the first time.
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Why Is Africa Still Poor?
As Asian countries grow in economic power, Africa lags behind the developed world. Can it ever catch up? Will corruption, geography and disease always hold it back?
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A Devil's Dictionary of Business
Nicholas von Hoffman : White-Collar Crime
Had your fill of spin and flimflam about the greatness of corporate America? Here's the real truth about money, high finance and low, commerce, clever tricks, globalism and globaloney.
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Barbara Ehrenreich's White Collar Blues
Barbara Ehrenreich probes a deeper level of white-collar angst: people who lose or quit their corporate jobs and routinely spend months, even years, finding another.
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Robert Kaplan: Empire Without Apologies
In his new book, Robert Kaplan proposes that the antidote to anarchy is empire, policed by soldiers holding an assault rifle in one hand and candy bars in the other.
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Desert Storm
This might be a good time for the Bush Administration to step up its reading on Saudi Arabia, starting with these three books.
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Good Vibrations
Cristina Nehring : Gender & Sexuality
Orgasms used to be a secret, then they became a right. Now they're a duty.
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Requiem for a Dream
Daniel Fuchs's The Golden West is best read as an author's requiem for the Hollywood he loved.
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Patriotic Bore
Two recent books on Tom Paine and on the unruly birth of US democracy reveal that liberal historians have become believers in the 'radicalism' of the American Revolution.
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After Hours
At Day's Close details everything that went on in the pre-industrial night, from fear to licentiousness.
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Fables of the Reconstruction
Diane McWhorter : Civil Rights & Liberties
The Informant and Son of the Rough South examine the dynamics of moral choice through the lens of the civil rights movement.
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Willing Executioners
Fatin Abbas : Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing
Machete Season is an attempt to trace what went on in the minds of the Hutus who helped exterminate their Tutsi fellow citizens in Rwanda.
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No Exit Strategy
Two new books examine what went wrong in the planning and conduct of the war in Iraq.
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Giving Chutzpah New Meaning
Alan Dershowitz is on the defensive over his research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The Cool War
The US government employed jazz musicians as ambassadors to the world during the cold war.
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An Acquired Taste
The story of the American products, producers and salesman that took over Europe in the last century.
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Cosmopolis
Home for centuries to Christians, Muslims and Jews, Salonica was a cosmopolitan world where people of various cultures and religions lived side by side.
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Twist and Shout
James M. McPherson : Slavery in America
What Michael Lind believes Abraham Lincoln believed.
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Just My Imagination
Terry Eagleton : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
Russell Jacoby's study of utopian thought is a flawed treasure.
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The Other 1905 Revolution
Physics was on the verge of something big at the turn of the century, and it took an Einstein to ask the big question in the right way.
2004
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Pop and Circumstance
Hensbergen's "biography" is the eleventh book (in English) devoted to Picasso's mural Guernica.
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Unfulfilled Promise
Joel Rogers : Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left
Jim Weinstein has spent most of his adult life writing about the failures and possibilities of the American left.
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Eugene McCarthy: 1916-2005
Eugene McCarthy, the Senate dove who in 1968 challenged Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War, died Saturday at the age of 89. In this 2004 review of Dominic Sandbrook's biography of McCarthy, Jon Wiener assesses the man and his impact on liberal politics.
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The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism
Reflections on anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and the importance of making distinctions.
2003
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Sacred Rage
Baruch Kimmerling : Middle East
Anyone who writes about terrorism is faced with the notorious problem of defining it.
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New York State of Mind
Phillip Lopate : New York City
Colson Whitehead's new perversely daring book is smooth, dazzling, evocative, but also narrow and monochromatic.
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The One-State Solution
The more the US sinks into a morass in Iraq, the more the Bush Administration leaps to do Sharon's bidding, the more fierce and wide-ranging the debate is likely to grow.