Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Books

The New York Public Library’s new sorting machine.
Uli Seit for The New York Times

The New York Public Library’s new sorting machine.

The New York Public Library now sends books branch to branch with the aid of a $2.3 million sorting machine housed in a renovated warehouse in Long Island City, Queens.

Books of The Times

‘Hellhound on His Trail’

In his new book, the historian Hampton Sides pieces together a dramatic account of the last days of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., intercut with the manoeuvrings James Earl Ray, his assassin.

Up Close

Her True Colors

The novelist Lisa Grunwald has a new book that may flush her out of the shadows.

Books of The Times

‘The Eerie Silence’

Paul Davies’s new book suggests that humans are looking for alien life in all the wrong places, and in all the wrong ways.

Books of The Times

‘The Publisher’

Alan Brinkley chronicles Henry Luce’s career creating Time, Life, Fortune and other magazines.

Books on Science

Embracing Silence in a Noisy World

George Prochnik’s “In Pursuit of Silence” sets out to understand noise and silence, and how they mold our surroundings.

Books on Science

A Similar Terrain for Ants and Men

E. O. Wilson’s novel, “Anthill,” has a philosophical premise, that there are grand cycles in nature, whether of ants, or people or the biosphere.

Mr. Cinderella: From Rejection Notes to the Pulitzer

Paul Harding’s “Tinkers” received a raft of rejections from publishers. Now this book championed by independent bookstores is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Books of The Times

‘The Letters of Sylvia Beach’

A new book examines the letters of Sylvia Beach, who founded Shakespeare & Company on the Left Bank of Paris and published Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

Drilling Down

Falling Sales for the Printed Word

Overall book sales in the United States dropped 1.8 percent in 2009.

Scrawled in the Margins, Signs of Twain as a Critic

In a small library in Redding, Conn., Mark Twain’s annotated personal books have sat in obscurity for 100 years.

Harlem Center’s Director to Retire in Early 2011

Howard Dodson plans to retire as the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Sunday Book Review

‘Solar’

Certain books are so bad that they’re actually rather good. Ian McEwan’s new novel is just the opposite: it’s so ingeniously designed, irreproachably high-minded and skillfully brought off that it’s actually quite bad.

Books About the Financial Crisis

“The Big Short,” by Michael Lewis, and “The End of Wall Street,” by Roger Lowenstein, offer a backstage view of the financial crisis.

‘Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir’

Ander Monson’s collection, in a tradition that has been described as the “lyric essay,” pointillistically confronts puzzles of truth and identity.

‘The Line’

In Olga Grushin’s novel, Soviet Russians line up for a year in hopes of securing tickets to a famous exile’s concert that may never happen.

‘Every Last One’

Disturbing ripples appear just beneath the surface in this novel of illusive domestic tranquility.

‘The Bradshaw Variations’

Rachel Cusk’s novel explores the family circle of a husband who leaves work to care for a daughter, and a wife who returns to a full-time job.

‘Imperfect Birds’

A powerful and painfully honest novel about the corrosive deceptions of a girl’s drug addiction.

‘The Art of Choosing’

Sheena Iyengar’s research indicates that we can handle more than a few choices, but an overabundance can paralyze us.

‘Tales From the 5th St. Gym’

A boxers’ doctor writes about the Miami Beach gym that nurtured Muhammad Ali and other world champions.

‘Parrot and Olivier in America’

In his 11th novel, Peter Carey models a character on Alexis de Tocqueville, gives him a feisty sidekick and parades him through the country.

‘Tocqueville’s Discovery of America’

A Harvard professor reveals the man behind “Democracy in America.”

‘Crossing Mandelbaum Gate’

A memoir of growing up American in the postwar Middle East, free to cross the checkpoints that defined others’ lives.

‘The Escape’

This novel follows a licentious 78-year-old widower’s conquests in the Alps.

‘The Lake Shore Limited’

The characters in Sue Miller’s new novel are connected by a theatrical production.

‘Jane’s Fame’

An account of Jane Austen as a canny agent of her own image.

‘The Sandbox’

In this first novel, one soldier learns that in Iraq, “expendable” refers to him and his buddies.

Essay

Keep Your Team Out of My Book

I simply refuse to read any books whose authors or characters have any affiliation with the Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys or the Duke University men’s basket­ball team.

Book Review Podcast

Featuring Anna Quindlen on her novel “Every Last One”; and Daniel Gross on two excellent new books about the Wall Street implosion.

‘The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg’

Deborah Eisenberg conveys her acutely self-conscious characters’ interiority with a Woolf-like grain, though with startling humor.

The Times's Critics

Recent reviews by:

Book Review Preview

The Radical Center: The History of an Idea

The Tea Party is new. But this is not the first time we’ve seen an angry populist politics emerge from the American middle class.

Arts and Leisure
Abroad

D.I.Y. Culture

The very forces of globalism that were expected to erode local cultures are helping to preserve them.

Business
Off the Shelf

When Marketing Becomes Almighty

A new book by Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennnant says advertising and marketing are increasingly dominant and defining forces in society.

Automobiles
Books

Reading, Riding, Wristmanship

Recent motorcycle books include a history of the English motorcycle industry and road tests of the hottest new bike designs.

2010 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music

The winners include the novel “Tinkers,” by Paul Harding; and the musical “Next to Normal.”

Book Review Features
TBR

Inside the List

“The Bridge,” David Remnick’s biography of Barack Obama, enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 3.

Paperback Row

Paperback books of particular interest.

Editors’ Choice

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

Up Front: Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel is at work on a book about glamour, which can crop up in unexpected places.

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