Book Reviews

As we approach this November’s presidential election, “blood bath” is quickly becoming one of Donald Trump’s favorite new terms. If he does not take the White House, there will be...

EXHIBIT, by R.O. Kwon“Everything was beautiful at the ballet,” goes the famous song from “A Chorus Line,” but of course backstage there are blisters, anorexia and worse, like the feathers...

Patrick O’Hara — a former TV star with a poolside home in Palm Springs and a closet of caftans — is everyone’s favorite uncle. At the end of Steven Rowley’s...

Emily Raboteau was 10 when her father gave her “the talk.” Growing up in America “would be tough,” he told his young daughter and her two brothers. “Because of White...

THE SECOND COMING, by Garth Risk HallbergGarth Risk Hallberg’s ambitious but uneven and exhausting new novel, “The Second Coming,” takes its title from an unreleased live album by Prince. One...

I’d never eaten Nashville hot chicken before, and I’d never met Reese Witherspoon.But there we were — she, in a blue and white pinstripe Oxford and jeans; me, in forgettable...

Natural Magic, by Renée Bergland (Princeton). Although Charles Darwin and Emily Dickinson are not known to have ever crossed paths, this study finds meaning in their shared enchantment with the...

Over the course of his reporting career, Sebastian Junger has had several close calls with death. A bullet whizzed past his face in Afghanistan; another time, a bomb exploded in...

He assumes his strange role in these men’s lives — managing household tasks, yes, but also joining their dinner parties, where he’s introduced as “Friend Gordon.” The book jacket proclaims...

AMÉRICA DEL NORTE, by Nicolás Medina MoraThe grandiose title of Nicolás Medina Mora’s first novel, “América del Norte” (“North America”), gives a good sense of its ironic tone and its...