Essays

While here are only two freestanding book reviews in this fair country, we do have a wealth of best book lists. Here is a meta-list: The Best of the Best Books of 2009.

In the United States wets and drys are unable to agree about alcohol. In the Valley of the Nile it is water that keeps England and Egypt from coming to an understanding.

Maybe the publication of Ford County means that short stories are making a comeback.

For this market to work, it’ll take a great effort from both The Atlantic and Amazon. (Oh, and $3.99 for a short story? Really?)

Does the motivation behind my philanthropic giving matter? If so, is it wrong to give out of guilt?

The Original of Laura is an obviously incomplete work, shepherded and huckstered into the marketplace by Nabokov’s greedy son.

Five books that portray contemporary life in Afghanistan, providing a perspective that’s essential to understanding the war.

Allen Tate was heartened to see the inaugural issue of VQR. The Fugitive, the magazine he had helped found in Nashville in 1922, was struggling and would publish its final number in a matter of months. Tate was hopeful that VQR would...

Every time I crunch into a fuyu persimmon I feel guilty, like when I read the Times online or ignore my local bookstore for a cheaper copy on Amazon or Alibris.

A review of Linda Gordon’s Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits and Robin Kelley’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.