Can’t Get No Satisfaction
From Wislawa Szymborska, “I’m old fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”
Current Reads
A collection of 72 issues
Stories of the South, North, East, and West
A round-up of wonderful books about locale—the South, Hollywood, Central America, even Trochenbrod—and other topics.
Are You Ready for Some Football?
Wherein the Man from Boston trusts you are not a human tuber.
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?
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.
Jeff Bezos Sucks
Connecting Shirley Sherrod and Alfred Dreyfus, biographies of buildings and Charles McCarry, and Faulkner and my TMN homies.