Annie Leibovitz at Work
A new opus from the best-known American photographer inter-splices her images with her own observations and mild revelations from her splendid career.
Robert Birnbaum
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
Two new books focus on a tragic event in Utah history: The first is nonfiction compiled by Mormon historians and underwritten by the LDS church; the second is fiction by award-winning Canadian novelist Alissa York.
Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting
A monograph supporting Joan Miró’s fifth major exhibition at New York’s MoMA is no substitute for being there, but the nearly 200 image volume does have its advantages.
The Man Who Owns the News
Vanity Fair columnist and news aggregator Newser founder Michael Wolff has shined a light on today’s messy media jungle by focusing on one of the increasingly powerful media empire owners, Rupert Murdoch.
Tinkers
The debut novel from Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate Paul Harding centers on a dying man’s reveries and hallucinations—a recurring literary trope—offering “a sense of primal encounter with the brilliant, elusive world of the senses.”
Books About Books
Two new books about books alternately cover anonymous authorship and the history of the destruction of books. Whether or not they are “meta” is open for debate.
The Ghost in Love
In his new novel, expatriate Jonathan Carroll—“master of sunlit surrealism”—presents a lovelorn ghost as the center of a morality tale wrapped in fable.
Demons in the Spring
Joe Meno anthologizes a collection of short stories—illustrated and designed by some very popular names in the industry—with a part of the proceeds going to Dave Eggers’s writing workshop.
Lincoln Logorrhea
In his cabinet choices, as in his home state, our president-elect mirrors our 16th president. Gore Vidal’s historical novel about Lincoln helps to balance the dozens of more rigid bios.
Poetry As Insurgent Art
On Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s lifelong work in progress, plus a 50th-anniversary edition of “A Coney Island of the Mind.”