Living as an introvert in a world that likes loud voices can feel hard. Many books promise to fix you. But you do not need fixing. The right books help…
Look. I have wasted a lot of money on self-help books. Some of them sit on my shelf. Unread. Some I read but forgot the next day. A few actually…
Have you ever pondered what life was like in 19th century America? The boulevards were full of horse carriages, towns were little, and life moved gradually. Chronicled fiction books set…
After the Spring To the Editor: In his otherwise incisive May 24 review of Noah Feldman’s “The Arab Winter: A Tragedy,” Robert F. Worth presents the Arab Spring uprisings as discrete historical…
CROSS OF SNOW A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow By Nicholas A. Basbanes Literary reputations are seldom secure, and with the passing of time tend to sink rather than rise. Even so, the…
When the actor and audiobook narrator Cary Hite learned he had been cast to read a novella for a sci-fi anthology, he was ecstatic — and not just because he…
1. Exodus The early spring sky is a deep saturated blue next to the muddy brown of the dry, scrubby hills of the San Miguel Mountains in southern California. Save for…
In March, when parts of the United States began shutting down because of the coronavirus, the best-selling children’s book author Jeff Kinney faced a dilemma. “Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure,” part…
Outsider stories resonate strongly with children: Even the luckiest of us start life in a land of giants where doorknobs and cookie jars hover beyond reach and adults call most…
In “I Confess,” the final essay in Moyra Davey’s new collection of prose pieces, “Index Cards” (2020), she recalls losing, as a child at school, a pencil given to her…
THE VANISHING HALFBy Brit Bennett Brit Bennett’s new novel, “The Vanishing Half,” grapples with that American racial chimera known as passing for white. Bennett asks: What is the cost, to an…
Image ‘A Burning,’ by Megha Majumdar (Knopf, June 2) A train attack in Kolkata brings together the fates and fortunes of three characters: Jivan, a young Muslim who is blamed for the…
