Book Review: The Fifth Heart
/In Dan Simmons' latest fantastic novel, Henry James finds himself teamed up with fiction's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, in order to solve a very real - and very heartbreaking - mystery.
Read MoreBook Review: The War That Used Up Words
/At the outbreak of the First World War, American writers flocked to Europe and headed for the Western Front in order to find their Muse - and to make some quick cash. A new book follows a handful of these earliest chroniclers
Read MoreA Place Out of a Story Book
/A close reading of Elisabeth de Waal's The Exiles Return reminds us that the dream of every returning exile is to savor not only a lost land but a lost time.
Read MoreTroppo Sottile
/Venice has traded flinty commercial acumen and world-weary merchant princes for an ennui worthy of M. John Harrison's science fiction; her profession has now become the art of insubstantiality. For centuries authors have tried and failed to capture her. Steve Donoghue surveys the glorious wreckage.
Read MoreWe've Been with Lizzie All Along
/A conversation about the enduring appeal of Pride & Prejudice.
Read MoreAmerican Aristocracy: Gods Of Copley Square - Centerpiece 1
/Byzantium rediscovered. An American in Venice and a forgotten Madonna (which breaks the rules) in Copley Square. Behold an American Hagia Sophia
Read MoreAbandonment, Richness, Surprise
/Impressionistic, idiosyncratic, unsubstantiated: Virginia Woolf's literary essays challenge us to rethink, not just our experience of reading, but our expectations of criticism itself.
Read MoreShore to Shore
/For two generations, the great American critic and man of letters Edmund Wilson has been instructing and delighting his readers - and inspiring some of them to become critics themselves.
Read MoreAmerican Aristocracy - Letter from Boston: Toward a New History
/Boston, so often reproved for living in its memories, may well be poised to lead the future, not in spite of its history but because of it.
Read MoreByronic Interludes
/The larger-than-life exploits of Lord Byron drew an erratic and daunting trajectory through the lives of those nearest him. A trilogy of novels attempts to go where so many biographies have gone before.
Read MoreMemo to a Colleague
/Is Marjorie Garber's defense of literary studies balm to the beleaguered English professor's soul? Not yet, anyway.
Read More“My Job Is to Be King"
/When the long reign of Victoria ended, her son took the throne with a bonhomie the country hadn't seen in a century. The new king ate and entertained prodigiously - and mediated prodigiously as "the uncle of Europe." A Year with the Windsors looks at Edward VII.
Read MoreHistory Without the Moon
/Her reign was epic in length and social impact, but it very nearly didn't happen at all. She ruled through two generations of her people, and she left the British monarchy very different from how she found it. She is Queen Victoria, and our Year with the Windsors starts as it must: with her.
Read MoreThe Platypus
/For more than fifty years and more than fifty novels, Louis Auchincloss chronicled the lives of New York's upper class. His last book is a memoir of his life among that upper class -- but is truth stranger than fiction?
Read MoreGeorge Eliot for Dummies
/Free thinker, strong-minded woman, scholar, lover, novelist: George Eliot lived a courageous life that should be known and celebrated. But does Brenda Maddox's biography do it justice?
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