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Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe Lisa Randall Ecco, 2015; 432pp In 1908, an object that may have been an asteroid or a comet exploded a few kilometers above the river Tunguska in the forests of Siberia. The blast was a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima; the […]
Read MoreDaydreams of Angels: Stories Heather O’Neill Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 368pp A girl and a boy sit in a kitchen listening to their grandfather’s absurd stories of Christmas past, when potatoes had eyes and lions could speak. “It was harder to tell the difference between when you were asleep and when you were […]
Read MoreHeaven: Poems Rowan Ricardo Phillips Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 80pp Heaven, Rowan Ricardo Phillips‘s new collection, dazzles. Nominated last week for the National Book Award, it’s a playful inquiry by an imaginative poet-critic into the nature of capital-H Heaven. While its formal satisfactions derive from its subtle internal symmetries and architectonic qualities, Heaven is also […]
Read MoreCharlie Mike: A True Story of Heroes Who Brought Their Mission Home Joe Klein Simon & Schuster, 2015; 320pp The mind, body, and spirit of the American soldier are at the heart of Joe Klein’s moving new book, Charlie Mike. Told in a brisk, anecdotal style, it’s the story of the men and women who came home from Afghanistan and Iraq. They came […]
Read MoreDoug Wright’s work is a broad church. He won an Obie in 1996 for the arch, racy Quills, which imagines the last days of the Marquis de Sade in the Charenton asylum. In 2004, he won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for I Am My Own Wife, a play about the German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, […]
Read MoreThe Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky PublicAffairs, 2015; 400pp One of the most remarkable features of Emma Sky’s gripping account of her experiences during the Iraq War is the fact that she was there at all. Time and again, visiting officials — Colin Powell, Tony Blair, David Miliband, Barack Obama […]
Read MoreA Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up With George by Kelly Carlin St. Martin’s Press, 2015; 336pp George Carlin plays the part of the magical storybook father for much of his daughter Kelly’s new memoir, A Carlin Home Companion, due to be published on September 15. He’s the fun dad, the dad who lets you do as you please. He […]
Read MoreFrank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage Barney Frank Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015; 400pp “In 1954, I was a fairly normal fourteen-year-old, enjoying sports, unhealthy food, and loud music,” writes Barney Frank at the start of his zippy, witty memoir. “But even then I realized that there were […]
Read MorePlato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Knopf Doubleday / Vintage, 2014; 480pp “Just accept the one preposterous premise that Plato could turn up in twenty-first-century America, an author on a book tour, and everything else, I hope, makes sense.” That’s the preposterous but brilliant premise of Rebecca […]
Read MoreGabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch Knopf Doubleday, 2014; 96pp A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014; 736pp How To Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999; 368pp “Many of the very greatest poems seem as if they were written in blood,” Edward Hirsch once […]
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