Let's Talk About Percival Everett's 'James'
The broad outlines of "James" will be immediately familiar to anyone with even a basic knowledge of American literature: A boy named Huckleberry Finn and an enslaved man named Jim are fleeing down the...
31 Maj 202445min
Writing About NASA's Most Shocking Moment
The year 1986 was notable for two big disasters, both of them attributable to human error and bureaucratic negligence at competing super powers: the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union and ...
17 Maj 202443min
Fantasy Superstar Leigh Bardugo on Her New Novel
In the world of fantasy fiction, Leigh Bardugo is royalty: Her Grishaverse novels are mainstays on the young adult best-seller list, her “Shadow and Bone” trilogy has been adapted for a Netflix series...
10 Maj 202441min
Colm Toibin on His Sequel to 'Brooklyn'
Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel “Brooklyn” told the story of a meek young Irishwoman, Eilis Lacey, who emigrates to New York in the 1950s out of a sense of familial obligation and slowly, diligently begins b...
3 Maj 202444min
Book Club: Dolly Alderton's 'Good Material'
How to explain the British writer Dolly Alderton to an American audience? It might be best to let her work speak for itself — it certainly does! — but Alderton is such a cultural phenomenon in her nat...
26 Apr 202446min
100 Years of Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster is not growing old quietly.The venerable publishing house — one of the industry’s so-called Big 5 — is celebrating its 100th birthday this month after a period of tumult that saw it p...
12 Apr 202431min
Looking Back at 50 Years of Stephen King
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King’s first novel, “Carrie.” In the decades since, King has experimented with length, genre and style, but has always maintained hi...
5 Apr 20241h 5min
Books That Make Our Critics Laugh
Earlier this month, the Book Review’s staff critics — Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai — released a list of 22 novels they have found reliably funny since Joseph Heller’s landmark c...
29 Mars 202430min
