Book News and Reviews

Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Barnaby Conrad, ex-bullfighter and nightclub owner, current novelist.

After 60 Years, a Promise Kept to Sinclair Lewis

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Barnaby Conrad has written a novel about John Wilkes Booth 60 years after promising Sinclair Lewis he would do so.

Books of The Times

‘The Hidden Reality’

By BRIAN GREENE
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN

Brian Greene, the author of “The Elegant Universe,” explains another frontier in physics.

Books of The Times

‘Harlem Is Nowhere’

By SHARIFA RHODES-PITTS
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER

A young black writer seeks to reconcile Harlem past and present.

Excerpt

Books of The Times

‘High on the Hog’

By JESSICA B. HARRIS
Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER

Jessica B. Harris writes about “the Africanizing of the Southern palate,” and ultimately of the American one.

Excerpt

Books

A Pound of Prevention Is Worth a Closer Look

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

Wild enthusiasm in seeking and treating tiny abnormalities.

Read an excerpt.

Daniel Bell, Ardent Appraiser of Politics, Economics and Culture, Dies at 91

By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

Mr. Bell was a writer, editor, sociologist and teacher who over seven decades came to epitomize the engaged intellectual.

Books of The Times

Bobby Fischer arriving in Iceland from Japan in 2005.

‘Endgame’

By FRANK BRADY
Reviewed by JANET MASLIN

In “Endgame,” a longtime associate of Bobby Fischer recounts the chess superstar’s rise and fall from grace.

McAvoy Layne prepares for his Mark Twain show in Nevada.

Mark Twain, Now a Career for the Mustachioed

By MALIA WOLLAN

Mark Twain impersonators are doing very well, thanks to “The Autobiography of Mark Twain,” published in 2010.

Morgan Entrekin, holding book, publisher at Grove/Atlantic, met with booksellers at the Winter Institute book fair last week.

Small Bookstores Struggle for Niche in Shifting Times

By JULIE BOSMAN

Take to the Internet? Sell coffee and muffins? Independent bookstores are looking for the right balance as even a giant like Borders finds it difficult.

Izzeldin Abuelaish looks with his son Abdallah at a photo of Bessan, a daughter killed in 2009.

Believing in Peace, Even After the Unthinkable

By JOSEPH BERGER

A Palestinian doctor, three of his children killed in a bombing, forswears hatred and sees history as an enemy of the future.

Books of The Times

‘O: A Presidential Novel’

By ANONYMOUS
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI

“O: A Presidential Novel” by Anonymous is speculative fiction about the 2012 campaign that is trite, implausible and decidedly unfunny.

Excerpt

Sunday Book Review

Illustration by Jeffrey Fisher

What It All Means

Two new books about philosophy and everyday life.

‘Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche’

By JAMES MILLER
Reviewed by SARAH BAKEWELL

James Miller argues that philosophers’ willingness to reflect on their own petty failings makes their lives more, not less, worth studying.

‘All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age’

By HUBERT DREYFUS and SEAN DORRANCE KELLY
Reviewed by SUSAN NEIMAN

Two eminent philosophy professors take aim at contemporary nihilism in this idiosyncratic tour of the classics.

Also in the Book Review

The Chalabi family. Ahmad is at right with his mother, Bibi.

‘Late for Tea at the Deer Palace’

By TAMARA CHALABI
Reviewed by LINDA ROBINSON

Ahmad Chalabi’s daughter offers an absorbing social history of Iraq through her family story.

‘Cinderella Ate My Daughter’

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Reviewed by ANNIE MURPHY PAUL

A tour of the hyper-feminine, commercialized world of young girls.

‘A Strange Stirring’

By STEPHANIE COONTZ
Reviewed by REBECCA TRAISTER

The social historian Stephanie Coontz re-evaluates “The Feminine Mystique” and its author, Betty Friedan.

Reviewer Spotlight: Rebecca Traister

‘Crime: Stories’

By FERDINAND VON SCHIRACH
Reviewed by OLEN STEINHAUER

A story collection inspired by true stories of German jurisprudence.

‘Lastingness: The Art of Old Age’

By NICHOLAS DELBANCO
Reviewed by BROOKE ALLEN

Nicholas Delbanco asks why some artists mature early and run out of steam, while others gain momentum in old age.

‘Learning to Die in Miami’

By CARLOS EIRE
Reviewed by LIGAYA MISHAN

This memoir recalls the heady, scary times of an 11-year-old Cuban’s introduction to America in the early 1960s.

‘Caribou Island’

By DAVID VANN
Reviewed by KEVIN CANTY

In David Vann’s first novel, isolation and an Alaskan winter take their toll on a marriage.

Profile of David Vann

‘Alone Together’

By SHERRY TURKLE
Reviewed by JONAH LEHRER

Sherry Turkle once saw technology as a tool for playing with identity. Now she fears it is replacing identity.

‘The Mistress of Nothing’

By KATE PULLINGER
Reviewed by LISA FUGARD

A novel recreates Lucie Duff Gordon’s escape to Egypt and how her Englishness slowly melted away.

‘Give Me Your Heart’

By JOYCE CAROL OATES
Reviewed by ANDREA THOMPSON

The women in Joyce Carol Oates’s latest collection display a powerful and self-destructive need for love.

Excerpt

HARDCOVER

Fiction
Nonfiction

PAPERBACK

All the lists »

Essay

The Philosophical Novel

By JAMES RYERSON

Can fiction be philosophical? Even novelists trained in philosophy have sometimes insisted no.

Nonfiction Chronicle

By LORI SODERLIND

Books by Roland Barthes, Mahmoud Darwish, Xiaoda Xiao and Mark Slouka.

Book Review Podcast

Featuring the philosopher Sean Dorrance Kelly on the classics of Western literature; and James Ryerson on novelists who are trained philosophers.

The Times's Critics

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Science

A male Acmon blue butterfly (Icaricia acmon). Vladimir Nabokov described the Icaricia genus in 1944.

Nonfiction: Nabokov Theory on Butterfly Evolution Is Vindicated

By CARL ZIMMER

Vladimir Nabokov studied butterflies, and he came up with a sweeping hypothesis that, 65 years later, DNA analysis has proven correct.

Slide Show: Nabokov's Butterflies

Travel

Shops and restaurants line one of the city’s winding lanes.

Norwich, England — a Getaway for Book Lovers

By RACHEL B. DOYLE

Two hours from London, medieval Norwich is a reader’s town, with a university that hosts literary festivals and plentiful bookstores and cafes whose author readings draw crowds.