For fans of John le Carré and Ben Macintyre, an exclusive first-person account of one of the Cold War’s most notorious spies. Read more
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Category: New Books
Generating Hope: Jack Zipes Republishes Anti-Fascist Children’s Book from the Early 20th Century
IN THE DARK DAYS leading up to the 2020 election, Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota and one of the world’s foremost experts on fairy tales and books for children, started in his retirement a new publishing house, Little Mole & Honey Bear, that aims to bring back from obscurity out-of-print children’s books that address political issues, such as the rise of fascism. Such books, often published in the 1930s and 1940s, are strikingly resonant with our contemporary political turmoil. But these are not dourly pedagogic books. As Zipes says in the mission statement for his press, these are books that “celebrate the poetic power of fantasy and illustrate how writers and illustrators have used their art to generate hope in their readers.” Read more
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Much More Than Muffins: The Women Scientists Who Invented Home Ec
Women trained in home economics wrote recipes for food manufacturers, invented clothing care labels and defined the federal poverty line. They set nutritional standards, demonstrated electrical appliances to rural residents, designed clothing patterns for female defense workers and pioneered radio programming. They served as military dietitians and endured captivity as prisoners of war. One of their number, Bea Finkelstein, developed food for the Project Mercury astronauts. Read more
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‘The Haunting of Alma Fielding’ Is a Ghost Story — and a Tale of Power and Fear
Summerscale’s writing is so inviting, the historical details folded into the narrative so well, that The Haunting of Alma Fielding reads like a novel you don’t want to put down. (The book design is also superb, the typeface somehow evoking something old and mysterious while also being easy on the eyes.) Best of all, it offers a variety of possibilities without definitively landing on one single answer; the book recognizes that, sometimes, the answer to the question “Was it real or was it fake?” is simply “Yes.” Read more
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Jhumpa Lahiri developed her voice for new novel ‘Whereabouts’ by first writing it in Italian
Writing is delicate work, perhaps doubly so when you are writing in a language that is not your native tongue. But Jhumpa Lahiri is no ordinary writer, and her latest novel, “Whereabouts” – an English translation of a story she originally wrote and published in Italian – requires the sort of deft hand so few can properly wield without it becoming boring and unobservant. Read more
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A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames
…Ames delivers an old-school L.A. crime novel that evokes Chandler with maybe an aftertaste of Bukowski. Readers expecting action won’t be let down, and the sparkling yet unpretentious language gives the whole an extra kick. Recommend to noir fans, action fans, anyone who likes a good read. Read more
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Literature’s Most Curious Creations
A new book takes readers into collector Edward Brooke-Hitching’s “madman’s library” Read more
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Decades After His Death, Richard Wright Has a New Book Out
“The Man Who Lived Underground,” a novel publishers rejected in the 1940s, is about an innocent Black man forced to confess to the murder of a white couple. Read more
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The 15th-Century Wool Worker’s Son Who Made Books for Princes and Popes
“The Bookseller of Florence,” by Ross King, tells the history of Renaissance bookmaking through the story of Vespasiano da Bisticci, who rose from humble roots to dominate the trade. Read more
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In ‘Beeswing’ Richard Thompson Revisits a Big Life Just Shy of the Mainstream
Richard Thompson, a British musician who somehow avoided pop stardom throughout his career, has just written about his early days in a new memoir called Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice. Read more
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