Book Review: The Warbler Guide
/Roger Tory Peterson called them "the butterflies of the bird world" - they're wood warblers, and when it comes to identifying and understanding them, Princeton University Press has published the Bible
Read MoreMissed Connections
/Is David Rakoff's novel-in-verse either worthy verse or a worthy novel? Does he pull off a high-wire act, as so many critics have concluded, or is it all a grand illusion?
Read MoreBehold the Man
/The meek and peaceful Jesus has become the standard Christian image of the Messiah. Religious scholar Reza Aslan's controversial new book shatters that image and replaces it with something very different: a violent revolutionary who came not to bring peace but a sword.
Read MoreIn Prague on an Errand
/In Caleb Crain's debut novel, a young man puts his ordinary life on hold and goes to post-revolution Prague in search of all the usual things young people go searching for in Prague. But, as reviewer Yulia Greyman observes, "false selves are a part of love."
Read MoreSparta, Iraq
/“We must compensate the man for the loss of his gun,” wrote Virginia Woolf. Roxana Robinson's riveting novel challenges us to imagine how we can do that as we work for peace.
Read MoreHome, Where the Art Is
/In "Belmont," Stephen Burt, poet of Boston's byways, offers readers verses that so court the senses as almost to confound them, shifting from technical confidence to unstructured questioning. As Kirsten Kaschock writes, "Burt attempts in these pages what Shylock did not dare" ...
Read MoreMeanwhile, On the Top Shelf
/Alan Moore's Watchmen is widely regarded as the best graphic novel of them all, and Moore has been outspoken in his condemnation of sequels and spin-offs, refusing to sanction DC Comics' recent "Before Watchmen" string of mini-series. Was Moore right? Or is there creative life after his masterpiece? Justin Hickey explores.
Read MoreVegetable Wonder
/It became entangled with the imperial hopes of a nation and inspired the design of one of the most significant buildings of the 19th century, the Crystal Palace: a new book explores the remarkable story of the Amazonian water lily.
Read MoreAugust 2013 Issue
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Read MoreMy Life as a Mannequin
/A young man on a tentative law school track encounters the fiction of Philip Roth, and suddenly, his lostness acquires a commanding sense of purpose. An essay by Barrett Hathcock.
Read MoreLord of the Round Table
/The Lord of the Rings draws on many medieval stories and myths. Oddly absent, however, are overt references to the one myth that ruled them all. A recently published poem fills that gap – but it may bemuse Tolkein's usual readers.
Read MoreBook Review: The White Princess
/"The Cousins' War" - Philippa Gregory's ongoing novelization of the Wars of the Roses - reaches an epic turning point in her latest book, about the precarious founding of the Tudor dynasty
Read MoreTender Reproach Aeronautics
/a poem
Read MoreThe Heartless World
/'Everyone knows who won the war,’ runs the refrain of Muriel Rukeyser’s Savage Coast; her newly published 1930 novel about the Spanish Civil War shows what it meant to be a witness to it.
Read MoreAlready Dead
/In the latest video game iteration of the current media zombie craze, a history teacher from Georgia confronts the undead hordes - and what those hordes may say about contemporary America
Read MoreWhen One Lives Among Greyhounds
/The stories of British writer H.H. Munro, known by his pen-name Saki, are devastating studies in torment and cruelty; they're also exceptionally funny. A new collection offers a bracing reminder of that duality.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “The Devil’s lair never looks like you expect”
/From the surfeit of Scandinavian thrillers comes one that stands out with the best: Bad Blood by Arne Dahl.
Read MoreNever Take Off the Mask: The Films of Gore Verbinski
/The man behind the trillion-dollar "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise (and, more recently, the high-profile "Lone Ranger" flop) has been characterized as a hack, a purveyor of standard-issue Hollywood dreck. But, asks Tucker Johnson, is there art buried in the films of Gore Verbinski?
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