Essays

The same city that brought us President Obama brought us Rod Blagojevich. Chicago is full of interesting stories.

Book covers do matter. There’s a whole blog dedicated to the topic.

E-books have been getting a lot of press recently. But why you would want to pay $400 for something no smaller, no lighter, and no easier to read than a paperback?

Retro-noir fiction makes a comeback, courtesy of the Hard Case Crime imprint.

Neale Donald Walsch victimized by his own brain, Joshua Casteel on his opposition to the war, Macmillen facetiously explains how books are published, and video of Whitman reading his work.

How will John Updike’s writing measure up twenty years from now?

The talk-show host recurses into himself, courtesy of Lawrence Lessig.

Mark Doty, Billy Collins, and Robert Pinsky get excited about a Thomas Hardy poem, plus CAPTCHA poetry, classifying profanity, and more.

I’d put up $20 that one of these six books will make the NYT Best Books of 2009.

In early October 2007, almost three years to the day after I began my career as a journalist in Russia, a conversation with a former CIA agent brought it to an end.