Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Epic Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Epic
The last book in J.K. Rowling's saga is marked by throwaway references to a post-9/11 world and derivative insights that never add up to a coherent moral vision.
Jul 26, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Lakshmi Chaudhry
The Improbable Moralist The Improbable Moralist
Leonard Michaels's fiction captured his evolution from sex-obsessed misogyny to self-identified moralism.
Jun 21, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Phillip Lopate
Night on Earth Night on Earth
After Dark, Haruki Murakami's edgy new novel, describes how the lives of a group of strangers intersect over the course of one night.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
The Virtual Realist The Virtual Realist
Philip K. Dick has become the most influential and prophetic of late-twentieth-century science fiction writers.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
The Imaginary Jew The Imaginary Jew
Two new novels, by Michael Chabon and Nathan Englander, recharge the modern Jewish experience with a sense of the exotic.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / William Deresiewicz
The Wharton School The Wharton School
A new biography describes how Edith Wharton transformed her obsessions into stories of loss, regret and entrapment.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Brenda Wineapple
The Dread Zone The Dread Zone
John Leonard, noted critic and former literary editor of The Nation, died Wednesay at 69. This review of Don DeLillo's Falling Man was one of his last pieces published in the magaz...
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
Stranger in the City Stranger in the City
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears tells the story of an Ethiopian immigrant's unrequited love affair with the American Dream.
Apr 26, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Tara Gallagher
It’s Doom Alone That Counts It’s Doom Alone That Counts
Georges Simenon's remarkable output includes investigative journalism, hardboiled novellas and dark psychological novels.
Apr 19, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Marco Roth
Humboldt’s Gift Humboldt’s Gift
The comic novel Measuring the World re-imagines the lives of two of the nineteenth century's greatest scientists.
Apr 12, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Mark M. Anderson