NYRB

My Fantoms

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Théophile Gautier.

The famed biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, Richard Holmes, compiles fantastical stories of love and death and from France's leading Romantic, friend of Hugo, and dedicatee of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. "It is in Gautier that we first seem to find an authentic French sense of the the unreal world...[it] is recognizable at once as something alike genuine and profound."—H.P. Lovecraft

Victorine

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Maude Hutchins.

A sexual awakening novel like none other, mixing elements of Adleran psychology, surrealism, and the American pastoral. "Maude Hutchins writes like a lascivious Ivy Compton-Burnett.... Somehow she manages to remain irreverent and even lighthearted about the transgressions she describes."—Time

The 13 Clocks

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By James Thurber.

Satirist Thurber takes on the fairy tale and the results are captivating. "There are spys, monsters, betrayals, hair's-breadth escapes, spells to be broken and all the usual accouterments, but Thurber gives the proceedings his own particular deadpan spin." —Los Angeles Times

Inverted World

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Christopher Priest.

The City is pulled along on tracks, forever at risk of slipping back in space and time, and threatened on all sides by hostile tribes. Christopher Priest's classic of hard science fiction is as mind-bending as it was when it was first published thirty years ago.

Justice at War: The Men and Ideas that Shaped America's War on Terror

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By David Cole.

David Cole takes a critical look at John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and David Addington, the men who made the decisions that shaped America's war on terror. Cole argues that America can prevail against the threat of terror not by dismantling the checks and balances that guarantee the fairness of our justice system, but by restoring them.

Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Norman Mailer.

1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in American politics and society, the effects of which reverberate today. Norman Mailer was on the ground, covering Nixon's relentlessly stage-managed nomination in Miami as well as the Democratic convention in Chicago?where the violence at the heart of the American dream exploded on the streets.

Uncle Cleans Up

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By J. P. Martin.

Uncle and his friends defend the labyrinthine regions of castle Homeward from the Badfort baddies. "A classic of British nonsense.... And a most elegant nonsense it is, utterly silly and deeply sophisticated at the same time." —Newsday

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By George R. Stewart.

Organized thematically (sample chapters: "Yankee Flavor," "America Discovers Columbus," and "How Names Were Symbols of Empire") this lighthearted book will be a delight for anyone who ever wondered how their hometown, or (more likely) the next town over, could be called that.

The Family Mashber

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Der Nister.

The story of three brothers—a businessman, a mystic, and a savant—that is a brilliantly innovative fusion of modernist art and traditional storytelling. "The restitution of this Yiddish masterwork—as life-saturated as the other great Russian novels—is an augmentation of world literature." —Cynthia Ozick

The Summer Book

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Tove Jansson.

A grandmother and her granddaughter live out a summer of play, talk, love, and exploration on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland (also the setting for some of the author's Moomintroll tales). "A marvelous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny." —Philip Pullman

The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Robert B. Silvers.

This collection of essays from The New York Review of Books looks back at the legacy of Bush, Cheney, and Rove, and ahead to the challenges and opportunities that will face America during the next administration. Contributors include Mark Danner, Joan Didion, Jonathan Freedland, Peter Galbraith, Joseph Lelyveld, Jonathan Raban, Frank Rich, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, and Michael Tomasky.

The Supreme Court Phalanx: The Court's New Right-Wing Bloc

Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 -0500

By Ronald Dworkin.

Ronald Dworkin analyzes the partisan decisions of the current Supreme Court and argues that Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas have created a conservative alliance bent on rewriting constitutional law, leaving past decisions on issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and campaign financing vulnerable to reversal in the next several years.