Book Review: Stalin and the Scientists
/The Soviet Union billed itself as a scientific utopia, and yet, as a tremendously readable new history illustrates, the awkward of marriage of state and science gave rise to a parade of absurdities.
Read MoreNormal Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Tishchenko's 8th
/Try as I might, I can’t stop listening to these late works of a Russian composer who was close to Shostakovich but never tried, as others did, to imitate him.
Read MoreBook Review: The Inkblots
/You've all seen the famous Rorschach inkblots; a fantastic new book tells the story not only of the inkblots but also of the odd, fascinating man behind them.
Read MoreBook Review: Homo Deus
/The author of the popular-science hit Sapiens returns with a book that looks not to humanity's distant past but rather to its immediate future.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Hungarian Treasures
/The unique selling point of this release is what appears to be the first recording of Bartok’s piano quartet in C minor. Unfortunately, it's not very good.
Read MoreBook Review: The President Will See You Now
/A warm, engaging memoir takes readers inside the post-presidency years of Ronald Reagan
Read MoreBook Review: Presidents' Secrets
/A concise, hard-hitting new book outlines the long history of secrecy at the heart of US government
Read MoreBook Review: Plotting to Kill the President
/A new history by the author of Hunting the President uncovers the long history of US presidential assassination attempts
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Kapralova piano music
/Vitezslava Kapralova was a pioneering conductor as well as a developing composer, but she died when she was only 25 years old. A disc of her piano music suggests just how much was lost when she passed away.
Read MoreBook Review: Powers of Darkness
/As a revelatory new version shows, the original Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula took more than a few liberties with the text ...
Read MoreBook Review: The House of Truth
/A wide-ranging and deeply-researched new book chronicles the history of an influential Washington political salon
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Renée Fleming's Distant Light
/Renée Fleming is ending her stage career. Let's hope this album, which plays to all her weaknesses, isn't the end of her recording career.
Read MoreBook Review: Hardwick Hall
/The great old fortress of good taste, Hardwick Hall, is the focus of a beautiful new anthology of essays on the place's storied art and architecture
Read MoreBook Review: William the Conqueror
/The latest volume in the Yale English Monarchs series is a hefty new biography of the man who started the whole series in the first place: William the Conqueror
Read MoreThe Disgraceful Lowlands of Writing
/Reiner Stach's masterful, epic biography of Kafka is finally complete. Never has the man been less mysterious, but can it illuminate the confounding, beguiling mystery of his writing?
Read MoreWest of Lovelorn
/The author of the uproarious debut Radium Baby returns with a surreal and oddly heartfelt riff on the YA genre, set in an Old West that ripples with unreality.
Read MoreRacing Toward Mytilene
/Two and a half millennia ago, a war between Athens and Sparta drove Greek civilization to its knees. A new book explores what demagogues and democracies can teach us about the fall of nations.
Read MoreBar-Kochba and Old Bolsheviks
/Not easily classified, Paul Goldberg's The Yid is historical but counterfactual, polemical yet absurd. Above all it is a testament to the Jewish experience.
Read Moreback-door typical
/a poem
Read MoreOne More for the Pantheon
/In tense action scenes, stylized dialogue, and rich narrative depth, novelist Ron Hansen tells the story of the Old West's signature outlaw, Billy the Kid.
Read More
