Banks seems to take his cue from the assertion by some modern historians that history is not an account of what happened but of what people think happened... read more
He decries the mutation of natural history museums into entertainment palaces, but his book has plenty of entertainment in the form of digressions, literary excursions and surprising analogies -- enough to irritate some readers... read more
Her stories were always long, and now they grow longer. The title story -- an extraordinary accomplishment even by Munro's soaring standards -- is really a novella... read more
Rachel, the first daughter, is the brainless soul of American materialism. A younger sister, Adah, is hemiplegic, limping and nearly speechless, but a verbal gymnast whose wit sets fire to her diary and lights up the true nature of anyone she notices... read more
When Willis takes two months off to work on the old house, a family fight on the first weekend lands him in jail, and the lawyer who springs him turns out to be a drug trafficker who brings Willis into the trade... read more
It is filled with anecdotes and sharp pictures of the wily Balkan leaders Holbrooke had to deal with, as well as with shrewd and seldom flattering analyses of the personalities and motivations of timid American and NATO military commanders... read more
The tentativeness of his career is pointed up by the deaths or despair of contemporaries who were his equals in art and by his failure into middle age to gain a public... read more
When he died in 1885, at 83, his funeral drew two million people. His huge body of work in every genre has saturated the French language with his expression... read more
