Jellyfish or Fossil? On Louis Agassiz Jellyfish or Fossil? On Louis Agassiz
Frustrated, stubborn, committed to bad science, was Louis Agassiz anything other than a laughingstock?
Mar 6, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple
A Deliberate Pace: On Rachel Carson A Deliberate Pace: On Rachel Carson
On a Farther Shore captures the conservationist’s deep sense of geologic time and the forces of evolution.
Feb 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld
In his writing and life, Thomas Bernhard led a charge in the opposite direction. His publisher always broke his fall.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case
Irritable Reachings: On John Keats Irritable Reachings: On John Keats
A new biography of John Keats is no match for Keats’s poetic inventions.
Jan 9, 2013 / Books & the Arts / James Longenbach
A Dash for It: On Lisa Cohen A Dash for It: On Lisa Cohen
The unconventional story of three women and their unconventional lives in the early twentieth century.
Dec 5, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Ruth Scurr
Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ Chicken Wire and Telephone Calls: On Robert Caro’s LBJ
In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro shows that LBJ’s brilliance as a politician lay not in his idealism but his opportunism.
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
Raw Judicial Power: On William Rehnquist Raw Judicial Power: On William Rehnquist
The Partisan is a weak account of the career and legal thinking of a conservative and obstreperous chief justice.
Oct 3, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Michael O’Donnell
The Unconquered Flame: On Robert Duncan The Unconquered Flame: On Robert Duncan
A new biography shows how the poet Robert Duncan fed a line backward into the labyrinthine history of human imagination.
Sep 18, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
The Generalist: On Charles de Gaulle The Generalist: On Charles de Gaulle
How Charles de Gaulle’s story became a collective fairy tale that the French have agreed to believe in.
Sep 12, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
The Antagonist: On Lillian Hellman The Antagonist: On Lillian Hellman
How did Lillian Hellman become the archetype of hypocrisy?
Aug 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Victor Navasky