Browse Books | New York Review Books

Detailed View | List View

Title	Author	Description
The Sun King Sun King	Nancy Mitford Mitford	Nancy Mitford crafts a dazzling double portrait of Louis XIV and Versailles, recreating the daily life of the King, his court, and his ministers during France’s golden age. “Nancy Mitford gives vivid, indeed searching, portraits of the Grand Monarch, and of his awe-struck relations and courtiers.... Readers will wish that her book were twice as long. —Sunday Times Contributors: Philip Mansel
Memoirs of a Revolutionary Memoirs of a Revolutionary	Victor Serge Serge	Perpetually fighting injustice, and seemingly always at odds with those in power, Victor Serge lived a life dedicated to revolution. Here the novelist tells his own story. Born to Russian exiles in Belgium, Serge took an active role in the Russian Revolution, though he was soon disenchanted with it and was expelled to France. From there Serge narrowly escaped the Nazis, ending up in the country that was to be his final refuge, Mexico. Contributors: Adam Hochschild , Peter Sedgwick with George Paizis
Alice James: A Biography Alice James	Jean Strouse Strouse	Alice James grew up in one of the most remarkable of 19th-century American families, and she was groomed to be no less remarkable than her brothers Henry and William. But a succession of poorly diagnosed ailments confined her to her bed for years at a time. Jean Strouse’s Bancroft Prize–winning biography is a portrait of a thwarted life, and a panoramic recreation of the particular intellectual world in which it came to be. Contributors: Colm Tóibín
Love's Work Love's Work	Gillian Rose Rose	Written as the author was dying of cancer, Love’s Work is a personal and philosophical meditation on fallibility and the endurance of love. “A masterpiece of the autobiographer’s art, intense and rationally decorous at the same time.” —Edward Said Contributors: Michael Wood
My Dog Tulip My Dog Tulip	J. R. Ackerley Ackerley	Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships. "This is one of the greatest masterpieces of animal literature." —Christopher Isherwood Contributors: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Original Letters from India Original Letters from India	Eliza Fay Fay	It took Eliza Fay over a year to travel from London to Calcutta at the end of the eighteenth century. The letters she wrote along the way are unguarded and lively and provide an unparalleled view of the adventure that was travel in days past. Contributors: E.M. Forster
The Journal 1837-1861 Journal 1837-1861	Henry David Thoreau Thoreau	To understand Thoreau, one must read his journals—but until now they have never been available in a one-volume reader's edition that draws on the entirety of his 14-volume journal. Here at last is the essence of the great naturalist's thoughts, accumulated over the span of a life time Contributors: Damion Searls , John R. Stilgoe
The Snows of Yesteryear: Portraits for an Autobiography Snows of Yesteryear	Gregor von Rezzori Rezzori	The author of Memoirs of an Anti-Semite tells his own story through portraits of the members of his childhood household. "An elegiac tribute to a receding past and a testament to the redemptive powers of memory—a family photography album, beautifully translated into words.—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review Contributors: John Banville , H. F. Broch De Rothermann
Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps Ringolevio	Emmett Grogan Grogan	Grogan went from street punk to teenage junkie to countercultural icon in a few years. As the leader of the San Francisco Diggers in the '60s he set the tone—puckish, anarchic, radical—for a movement that was to alter the social fabric. He was also a great self-mythologizer. As Paul Krassner put it, "The leader of the Diggers doesn't exist, and his name is Emmett Grogan." Contributors: Peter Coyote
Afloat Afloat	Guy de Maupassant Maupassant	Maupassant merges fact and fiction, dream and documentation in this seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast. "[Afloat] has spontaneity, gaiety and freshness."—Daily Telegraph (UK) Contributors: Douglas Parmée