Reviews Archives

New Books

by Tom Bissell,

Some of the most interesting minds at work in the American arts today can be found in the video-game industry. Such designers as Jonathan Blow, Jenova Chen, Clint Hocking, Ken…

Nothing Serious

by Pico Iyer,

P. G. Wodehouse and the costs of innocence

Rake’s Progress

by Charles Bock,

Adult animation grows up with Archer

New Books

by Jane Smiley,

Since Don Quixote, the essential subject of the novel has been geography: what is out there, who lives there, how they are different from characters who live in other landscapes.…

Red States

by Michael Scammell,

The Soviet Attempt to Export Communism

Madame and the Masters

by John Crowley,

Blavatsky’s cosmic soap opera

New Books

by Tom Bissell,

In 70 a.d., a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem after a long siege. Perhaps no event has had more enduring reverberations. Judaism lost…

The Tines They Are A-changin’

by Steven Shapin,

A history of table technology

The Chameleon

by Michael Dirda,

Thornton Wilder's multifaceted life and work

New Books

by Jane Smiley,

Ashok Rajamani would like to show you what happens when 100 billion neurons are suddenly overwhelmed by bursting blood vessels. In June 2000, at the age of twenty-five, Rajamani is…

A Tone Licked Clean

by Laura Miller,

Fairy tales and the roots of literature

Man Underwater

by Wes Enzinna,

The democratic fiction of Richard Brautigan

The Gregorian, Julian, Coptic, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Tibetan, Zoroastrian, and Mesoamerican calendars—and the Mayan, which predicts that the world will end just days after this issue reaches your hands—all…

New Books

by Joshua Cohen,

Tom Wolfe is back with Back to Blood (Little, Brown and Company, $30) and I have to confess, after wading through this multiculti, multilingual, punnyfunny Miami miasma, that it’s difficult…

Mental Weather

by Christine Smallwood,

The many voices of Zadie Smith

The Humble Vernacular

by Dan Chiasson,

A word-of-mouth dictionary

Death’s Triumph

by Vince Passaro,

The medieval tales of Cronenberg and DeLillo

Double Vision

by William H. Gass,

George Orwell

New Books

by Joshua Cohen,

To historians, the world has always imagined its own demise; to critics, the end of the world is imminent. Meanwhile, my generation demands to read both apocalypses instantly and for…