Are You Ready for Some Football?
Wherein the Man from Boston trusts you are not a human tuber.
Robert Birnbaum
America Goes Back to School
A fine salad of real books for fall—on Diaghilev, the saddest music ever composed, surfing, Seamus Heaney, and Charlie Chan.
Late Summer Hodgepodge
New books: Paul Muldoon and Nat Hentoff; Pamela Geller and Chalmers Johnson; Dago Gilb and Simon Van Booys; and James Baldwin. All present.
One Never Know, Do One?
Art Shaw, Alexander the Great, Chicagoan Richard Stern’s miscellany, going up the country, and a literary kerfluffle or two—that’s what you get here.
Do We Care What Time It Is?
Reviewing the week in books, Birnbaum wrestles with Time’s Franzen cover, 10 “best” novellas, cowboy movies, and political philosophy. Who loves you, baby?
Jennifer Egan
Our man in Boston sits down to chat with author Jennifer Egan about her new novel, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” and what it’s like to write in PowerPoint.
Top 10 Books of the Year
Just kidding. This week, Rick Moody does Vonnegut, Chuck Hogan brings us crime, Tom Engelhardt tells the sad and ugly truth, and much more.
Darkness in August
In the end of summer, some terrific—and terrifically dark—books about cities like Galveston, Berlin, and Ciudad Juárez. Plus, a Jim Harrison poem to lighten the mood.
David Mitchell Redux
Ten years after their first conversation, author David Mitchell and our man in Boston discuss 18th-century Japan, shoplifting from other novels, and Mitchell’s annual Christmas party.
Jeff Bezos Sucks
Connecting Shirley Sherrod and Alfred Dreyfus, biographies of buildings and Charles McCarry, and Faulkner and my TMN homies.