To begin with, that old nugget of a tale, as most of us think we know it, is just that, a nugget, a concise dramatic turn aboard a ship overloaded with breadfruit after a long stay in Tahiti and bound for the West Indies... read more
Ali's first book has spent most of this summer on the British best-seller lists, a popular success fueled by a critical one: earlier this year, Granta named her as one of Britain's 20 best young novelists... read more
You don't have to note that we're not in Vermont here -- never mind that we're also post-Altamont and post-''Easy Rider'' -- to realize that Drop City,... read more
A conscientious biography of a worthy subject cannot help being a portrait of the times, and Taubman's book fully lives up to the ''and his era'' of the subtitle... read more
Augustus, a carpenter who bought his own freedom with money earned from his carvings and furniture, then over time bought his wife and son out of slavery... read more
Garcia Marquez's new book, a memoir called ''Living to Tell the Tale,'' reminds us that what seems so fantastical in ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is in fact a reasonable description of Colombia,... read more
Pepys had two great accomplishments. He was the creator, in effect, of the modern British Navy, and to this day naval historians so revere him that they regard the other Pepys, the literary one, as an embarrassment and a distraction... read more
