Books & the Arts

Mad Mel and the Maya Mad Mel and the Maya

Mel Gibson's violent new film Apocalypto exploits Maya culture and perpetuates racist stereotypes.

Nov 30, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Earl Shorris

The Day the Music Died The Day the Music Died

It's the end of the world as we know it: Tower Records, the last great CD emporium, is closing, victim of the iPod and MP3 revolution. As Wal-Mart and other big-box stores pick up ...

Nov 27, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Max Fraser

A Life of His Own A Life of His Own

Victoria Glendinning's biography of Leonard Woolf looks at a remarkable public intellectual whose life and work were eclipsed by his more famous spouse.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple

God’s Willing Executioners God’s Willing Executioners

God's War explores the barbaric clash of Christianity and Islam, and what happens when people follow religious voices that no one else can hear.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Lazare

The Man Who Loved Children The Man Who Loved Children

Adam Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate details the trials of a very smug and special class of parents raising children in post-9/11 New York.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Suzy Hansen

Class Consciousness Class Consciousness

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford explores the contradictions of a social revolutionary possessed of an aristocrat's sense of the wrong and right kind of people.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Charles Taylor

Secrets Secrets

Your coffin was so small, Only I knew it was full of candlewick bedspreads, orange pekoe tea leaves smoking chimneys over wet peat;

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Eavan Boland

The Collaborator The Collaborator

The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / David A. Bell

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Laura Kipnis's The Female Thing takes women to task for perpetuating the notion that they're vulnerable.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Christine Smallwood

Getting Even Getting Even

Roald Dahl's Collected Stories are best enjoyed by adult readers who take their humor black.

Nov 22, 2006 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Amidon

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