Book Review: Louis Agassiz
/He revolutionized modern science, and then modern science left him behind. Now a glowing new biography introduces him to a new generation.
Read MoreGuest Movie Review: Jack the Giant Slayer
/The old folk tale gets an sfx-laden kid-friendly modern retelling by one of Hollywood's most successful directors
Read MoreBook Review: The Murder of Cleopatra
/When examining the death of Cleopatra, it's inevitable: sooner or later, you're going to have to deal with asp-holes
Read MoreBook Review: Spartacus
/He escaped from slavery, fought Rome, and became an immortal name - but what can we really know about Spartacus?
Read MoreBook Review: The Praetorian Guard
/They guarded emperors, they served emperors, and occasionally they killed emperors - they were the Praetorian Guard
Read MoreBook Review: The Devil's Looking Glass
/In his latest adventure, Mark Chadbourn's swashbuckling Elizabethan adventurer Will Swyfte continues his battle against the supernatural forces of the Unseelie Court
Read MoreThe Geeks Shall Inherit
/We've long endowed campaign consultants with shamanistic powers, but now a new truth is beginning to emerge--the people behind the scenes who can do most to win elections are the data analysts and stat nerds.
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 MoreThe Flimsiness of Difference
/After fictionalizing his experiences in his previous four books, Aleksandar Hemon revisits his memories in a new collection of essays.
Read MoreExit the Dragons
/Yes, we know Sam Lipsyte's stories are laugh-out-loud funny. But all that low comedy--the pratfalls, the dirty jokes--serves as the ballast for some of the darkest stories in contemporary fiction. Steve Danziger elaborates.
Read MoreHow Pictures Comes to Life
/Sviatoslav Richter called Pictures at an Exhibition the “best Russian work for piano, amen”; many know it best through Ravel’s lush orchestration, which Richter considered “an abomination.” This beloved piece becomes even more resonant when you know its genesis in Mussorgsky’s friendship with the architect-artist Viktor Hartmann.
Read MoreTrauma Room
/To make something we must first unmake or take apart something else. Why, then, in a novel preoccupied with acts of destruction and reconstruction, does Pat Barker not offer a corresponding deformation of form? Has her critique of Modernism led her to disavow art altogether?
Read Morenew old forest: infrastructure
/a poem
Read More“He Might As Well Have Called Me Nancy!” Mark Twain in Italy
/After his first visit to Italy, Mark Twain pronounced her "one vast museum of magnificence and misery," and yet he returned again and again. Luciano Magniafaco chronicles his journeys.
Read MoreThe Road Home: On Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Over the River
/New York artist Christo wants to drape 5.9 miles of silvery fabric over a 42 mile stretch of the Arkansas River. The sketches are lovely, but locals and environmentalists are horrified. Who's in the right?
Read MorePoint of Origin
/"He said he would have Crispin Glover play him in a movie"--Alejandro Ventura's image-rich and always funny poetry is on full display in Puerto Rico. Joe Betz reviews.
Read MoreUnhappy In Its Own Way
/Car crashes, suburban swingers' societies, accidental prostitution, Nixon enthusiasts, and a cameo performance by Don DeLillo - in her latest novel, A.M. Homes maintains her equilibrium
Read MoreA snake once flew through the air
/A conversation with Adam Golaski about The Problem of Boredom in Paradise: Selected Poems of Paul Hannigan
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “The most successful criminals don’t look the part”
/Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs, is a dazzling debut that deserves a place as a benchmark of the crime-thriller genre
Read MoreMarch 2013 Issue
/By the poet Paul Hannigan, who would have turned 77 this month
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