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Book Discussion PicksLatest from the New York Times Book Reviews
The book reviews are updated daily by the New York Times.
- Wasted Land Nick Reding’s unnerving portrait of Oelwein, Iowa, depicts a catastrophe of Chernobylish dimensions, precipitated by the loss of jobs and the rise of methamphetamines.
- Unreal Estate In “Busted,” The Times’s Edmund L. Andrews explains why he bought a house he couldn’t afford. In “Our Lot,” Alyssa Katz chronicles how home lending was upended in the first place.
- Past-Prime Crisis In this novel, a septuagenarian East Village couple wrestle with real estate, terrorism, real estate, an ailing dog and real estate.
- Goddess of Mischief A lively, harrowing biography of the glamorous Idina Sackville, celebrated and reviled as a ringleader of the British colonial scene in 1920s Africa.
- God and Man at National Review An engaging memoir of a young man basking in, and at times trying to escape, the aura of his famous mentor, William F. Buckley Jr.
- The Baby-Industrial Complex A new father’s memoir of modern parenting, from Buy Buy Baby to Dr. Ferber.
- Misery Loves Company In this novel, middle-aged American women with major relationship problems flee to Mexico in search of repair and romance.
- Paper Trail This admiring but not uncritical biography makes a strong case for I. F. Stone’s relevance to our own time.
- Over There A new condensed history of World War I, from the map rooms to the trenches to the tombs.
- Princes and Imams A Times reporter’s funny, perceptive take on the Middle East and why reform there is so difficult.
Latest book news from NPR
The book reviews are updated daily by the National Public Radio.
- An Enchanting Tour Through A World Of Idioms Author Jag Bhalla catalogs the unique turns of phrase that different cultures use in his new book I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears.
- Chat While Reading: The Future Of Books? BookGlutton.com, a new interactive site, allows readers to chat while reading. Could this mark the beginning of a change in how we read books?
- Red, White And True: The Great American Biography Country legend Johnny Cash, bon vivant George Plimpton and consummate entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. don't have much in common. But their lives have much to tell us about what it means to be a great American.
- In Imagined Future, Elder Care Comes At A Price In a society driven toward endless economic progress, what's the value of those who can't or won't contribute? Ninni Holmqvist's thought-provoking, compulsively readable The Unit provides a dark vision of one possible answer.
- From Francine Prose, A Tale Of Growing Up, Loss In the novel Touch, Francine Prose tells the story of the conflicting accounts that arise after a 14-year-old girl is groped by three male friends on a school bus.
- A Nuanced Novel Of Race In The Deep South Author Kathryn Stockett explores racial tensions in the Deep South from three different perspectives in her novel The Help. Karen Grigsby Bates says if you read one book this summer, this should be it.
- 'Family': Fundamentalism, Friends In High Places In the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, author Jeff Sharlet examines the power wielded by the secret Christian group known as The Family or The Fellowship.
- Zombies: Still Undead, And Suddenly Everywhere Zombies, long a horror-movie staple, are taking bigger bites out of pop culture, infecting books, banking, even our vocabulary. Beth Accomando surveys a genre trope that refuses to die.
- In The Dictator's Shadow, Life Petina Gappah's richly observed stories in An Elegy for Easterly capture a world tourists could never hope to see, of people, rich and poor, living their lives in the surreal shadow of Zimbabwean President Mugabe's regime.
- Booker Winner Adiga's New Short Stories Writer Aravind Adiga won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for his novel The White Tiger. Now, he has a book of 14 short stories set between the assassinations of two Indian leaders — one in 1984 and the other in 1991. Alan Cheuse says that in Between the Assassinations, Adiga reveals great breadth and depth in the hearts of his characters.
