The New York Review of Books

The Storyteller and the Kid

March 8, 2012

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

How Good Are China’s Schools?

October 13, 2011

Finish That Homework!

August 18, 2011

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

West Coast Delusions

February 24, 2011

When the Killing’s Done by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Paying the Right Kind of Attention

October 14, 2010

The Same River Twice by Ted Mooney

The Marrying Kind

August 19, 2010

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity by Kate Braestrup

The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today by Andrew J. Cherlin

Why Him? Why Her? How to Find and Keep Lasting Love by Helen Fisher

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb

The Way Forward

November 5, 2009

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Patient Talks Back

October 23, 2008

The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor

The Thing About Life Is ThatOne Day You’ll Be Dead by David Shields

J.G. Ballard: The Glow of the Prophet

October 9, 2008

Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by J.G. Ballard

The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard

Crash by J.G. Ballard

Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard

Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard

Running Wild by J.G. Ballard

The Kindness of Women by J.G. Ballard

Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard

Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard

Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard

Will to Live

February 14, 2008

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir by David Rieff

The Malibu Decameron

April 26, 2007

Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley

The Triumph of Turgenev

March 29, 2007

Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev by Robert Dessaix

True Confessions

November 16, 2006

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

Barbara Epstein (1928–2006)

August 10, 2006

In Love with Jane

June 23, 2005

A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen by Richard Jenkyns

Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinshipin English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818 by Ruth Perry

Jane Austen by Darryl Jones

Searching for Jane Austen by Emily Auerbach

Jane Austen and the Enlightenment by Peter Knox-Shaw

Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets by William Deresiewicz

Stiff Upper Lip

October 21, 2004

The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes

False Promises

December 4, 2003

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

The War Between Men and Women (Cont’d)

October 23, 2003

Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Men and Women by Andrew Hacker

The Art of Living

September 26, 2002

A Charmed Couple: The Art and Life of Walter and Matilda Gay by William Rieder

Mysteries of Paris: The Quest for Morton Fullerton by Marion Mainwaring, with a foreword by Richard Howard

The Unspoken Word

March 8, 2001

The Best Men?

October 19, 2000

The Golden Age by Gore Vidal

Going West

April 27, 2000

In America by Susan Sontag

Missionary

May 20, 1999

Single & Single by John le Carré

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999)

April 22, 1999

My Blue Heaven

July 16, 1998

Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers by Julia Grant

Dr. Spock: An American Life by Thomas Maier

Baby and Child Care Seventh edition, by Benjamin Spock, by Steven Parker

Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families by Bill McKibben

Family Man by Calvin Trillin

Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality by William Wright

The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America’s Beleaguered Moms and Dads by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, by Cornel West

Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith F. Small

American Pie

December 18, 1997

Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child by Noël Riley Fitch

A Welcoming Life: The M.F.K. Fisher Scrapbook compiled and annotated by Dominique Gioia

Marcella Cucina by Marcella Hazan

The All-New Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, by Marion Rombauer Becker, by Ethan Becker

The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century by Jean Anderson

What Do Women Want?

November 28, 1996

‘Bad Girls’/’Good Girls’: Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties edited by Nan Bauer Maglin, edited by Donna Perry

‘Feminism is Not the Story of My Life’: How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

She Works, He Works: How Two-Income Families are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off by Rosalind C. Barnett, by Caryl Rivers

The Sibling Society by Robert Bly

The Seasons of a Woman’s Life by Daniel J. Levinson

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood by Sharon Hays

The Constant Wife

September 21, 1995

D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage by Brenda Maddox

A Genius for Living: The Life of Frieda Lawrence by Janet Byrne

Frieda Lawrence, Including ‘Not I, But the Wind’ and other autobiographical writings by Rosie Jackson

Rags!

February 16, 1995

Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century by Philippe Perrot, translated by Richard Bienvenu

Sex and Suits by Anne Hollander

The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush to Razgrad by Sheila Paine

Fashion, Culture, and Identity by Fred Davis

The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy by Gilles Lipovetsky, translated by Catherine Porter, foreword by Richard Sennett

Supergirls

December 2, 1993

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang by Joyce Carol Oates

How Mexican Is It?

September 23, 1993

Eclipse Fever by Walter Abish

Star

April 8, 1993

Screening History by Gore Vidal

Live From Golgotha by Gore Vidal

Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca—Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz

M.I.A. or Mythmaking In America by H. Bruce Franklin

Do Women Care More?

April 23, 1992

Something for the Boys

January 16, 1992

Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly

Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity by David D. Gilmore

Fire in the Belly: On Being A Man by Sam Keen

Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness by Robert A. Johnson

King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore, by Douglas Gillette

Prisoners of Men’s Dreams: Striking Out for a New Feminine Future by Suzanne Gordon

Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

Dreams of E.A. Poe

July 18, 1991

The Best of Times

March 28, 1991

Possession by A.S. Byatt

‘Grand Hotel’

December 20, 1990

Tell, Don’t Show

November 22, 1990

Walter Winchell: A Novel by Michael Herr

Wildlife by Richard Ford

The Screenplay: A Blend of Film Form and Content by Margaret Mehring

Back to Mormonism

June 28, 1990

The Lost World of the Mormons

March 15, 1990

The Chinchilla Farm by Judith Freeman

‘Doc’: The Rape of the Town of Lovell by Jack Olsen

The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death by Steven Naifeh, by Gregory White Smith

Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders by Linda Sillitoe, by Allen Roberts

Windows on the Sea and Other Stories by Linda Sillitoe

The Sexual Fast Track

March 1, 1990

In Bed with Social Science

October 12, 1989

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute by Albert D. Klassen, by Colin J. Williams, by Eugene E. Levitt, edited by Hubert J. O'Gorman

‘AIDS Without End’

December 8, 1988

AIDS Without End

August 18, 1988

Report of the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic by James D. Watkins chairman. submitted to the President of the United States, June 24, 1988

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Living Legends

July 16, 1987

A Sport of Nature by Nadine Gordimer

Playtime

January 29, 1987

Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures by Frances FitzGerald

A House Is Not a Home

December 4, 1986

Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynski

House by Tracy Kidder

The Englishman’s Room edited by Avilde Lees-Milne, photographs by Derry Moore

Designs for Interiors: Catalog to the Exhibition by Stephen Calloway

Southern Comfort

November 7, 1985

In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Conspirators

March 14, 1985

White Noise by Don DeLillo

‘Literary Domestics’

October 11, 1984

Warlock

June 14, 1984

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

Darn that Darning

April 12, 1984

Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America 1830–1870 by Karen Halttunen

The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America by Harvey Green

Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America by Mary Kelley

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose

Worst Wishes

February 16, 1984

Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge by Susan Jacoby

Man Slaughter by Steven Englund

Ruskin Our Contemporary?

March 31, 1983

The Wider Sea: A Life of John Ruskin by John Dixon Hunt

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin edited by George Allan Cate

The Ruskin Polygon edited by John Dixon Hunt, by Faith M. Holland

New Approaches to Ruskin: Thirteen Essays edited by Robert Hewison

Studies in Ruskin: Essays in Honor of Van Akin Burd edited by Robert E. Rhodes, by Del Ivan Janik

Letters from the Continent 1858 edited by John Hayman

Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder by Elizabeth K. Helsinger

Ruskin and Venice by Jeanne Clegg

Ruskinian Gothic: The Architecture of Deane and Woodward, 1845-1861 by Eve Blau

The Poison Sky: Myth and Apocalypse in Ruskin by Raymond E. Fitch

Ruskin’s Maze: Mastery and Madness in His Art by Jay Fellows

Rite of Passage

August 12, 1982

Life After Marriage: Love in an Age of Divorce by A. Alvarez

Marriage, Love, Sex and Divorce by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy

Goys Into Wasps

May 27, 1982

Point of Departure

March 4, 1982

The Dean’s December by Saul Bellow

The Flight of the Bumble Bee

February 18, 1982

The New American Cuisine by the editors of Metropolitan Home

The Elegance with Ease Cookbook by Fern Lebo

Discover Brunch: A New Way of Entertaining by Ruth Macpherson

Cooking with Carrier by Robert Carrier

Robert Carrier’s Entertaining

Too Busy to Cook? Bon Appetit magazine

The New York Times More 60-Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey

Fifteen-Minute Meals by Emalee Chapman

The New James Beard by James Beard

The Park Avenue Cookbook by Sara Stamm

The Helen Corbitt Collection edited by Elizabeth Ann Johnson

Pamela Harlech’s Practical Guide to Cooking, Entertaining & Household Management

The Only Texas Cookbook by Linda West Eckhardt

The World’s Best Food for Health and Long Life by Michael Bateman, by Caroline Conran, by Oliver Gillie

Kitchen in the Hills: The Hovel Cookbook by Elizabeth West

The Microwave Chinese Cookbook by Lillian Chen, by Edith Nobile

Cookbook from a Melting Pot An E. Paulucci Book, by Elizabeth Paulucci

The Nouvelle Cuisine Cookbook by Armand Aulicino

The French Cuisine of Your Choice by Isabelle Marique, by Albert Jorant

Kitchen Science: A Compendium of Essential Information for Every Cook by Howard Hillman

Chinese Technique by Ken Hom, by Harvey Steiman

Cooking Techniques: How to Do Anything a Recipe Tells You to Do by Beverly Cox, by Joan Whitman

The Cook’s Handbook by Prue Leith

Judith Olney’s Entertainments: A Cookbook to Delight the Mind and Senses

The Heart of the Heart of the Country

November 19, 1981

Old Glory: An American Voyage by Jonathan Raban

After Jonestown

October 8, 1981

Our Father Who Art in Hell by James Reston Jr.

The Children of Jonestown by Kenneth Wooden

Awake in a Nightmare—Jonestown: The Only Eyewitness Account by Ethan Feinsod

In My Father’s House: The Story of the Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones by Min S. Yee, by Thomas N. Layton

Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy by Shiva Naipaul

The Strongest Poison by Mark Lane

Colette in Pieces

April 2, 1981

Letters from Colette selected and translated by Robert Phelps

Waiting for Righty

November 6, 1980

Loon Lake by E.L. Doctorow

Not Right for Our Rose

May 15, 1980

John Ruskin and Rose La Touche: Her Unpublished Diaries of 1861 and 1867 introduced and edited by Van Akin Burd

Correction and Clarification

February 21, 1980

The Talk of Nohant

February 7, 1980

Death for Sale

December 6, 1979

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

She Had It All

October 11, 1979

My Life by George Sand, translated and adapted by Dan Hofstadter

George Sand in Her Own Words translated and edited by Joseph Barry, introduction by Ellen Moers

The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters translated by A.L. McKenzie

The Double Life of George Sand, Woman and Writer by Renee Winegarten

Cult Freedom

September 27, 1979

Ruskin’s Originality

June 14, 1979

Beyond the Evidence

June 14, 1979

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick

Heart of Darkness

April 19, 1979

The Suicide Cult: The Inside Story of the Peoples Temple Sect and the Massacre in Guyana by Marshall Kilduff, by Ron Javers

Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account by Charles A. Krause, with Lawrence M. Stern, by Richard Harwood, by Frank Johnston

Hold Hands and Die!: The Incredibly True Story of the People’s Temple and the Reverend Jim Jones by John Maguire, by Mary Lee Dunn

Six Years With God: Life Inside Reverend Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple by Jeannie Mills

The Return of Ruskin

January 25, 1979

Ruskin’s Venice edited by Arnold Whittick

Looking at Architecture with Ruskin by John Unrau

John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye by Robert Hewison

Ruskin by Quentin Bell

Home Remedies

October 26, 1978

Families by Jane Howard

Release Ngugi

June 15, 1978

Unkind Cut

June 15, 1978

Ah, Wilderness!

March 23, 1978

The Last Cowboy by Jane Kramer

Coming into the Country by John McPhee

The Oppressor in the Next Room

November 10, 1977

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

White Rat by Gayl Jones

Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

Hard Hit Women

April 28, 1977

How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Lover by Bertha Harris

The Mysterious West

April 28, 1977

Ghosts

February 3, 1977

The Names by N. Scott Momaday

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

Encounter with an Angry God by Carobeth Laird

Justice to Charlotte Brontë

November 25, 1976

Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived by Helene Moglen

An Expert’s Obligation

October 14, 1976

Friendly Fire

October 14, 1976

True Patriots

August 5, 1976

The People v. Patty Hearst

April 29, 1976

Degrees of Rape

April 1, 1976

The War Between Men and Women

December 11, 1975

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

Rape: The Bait and the Trap by Jean MacKellar, with the collaboration of Dr. Menachem Amir

Rape and Its Victims: A Report for Citizens, Health Facilities and Criminal Justice Agencies Enforcement Assistance Administration, Washington, DC. Criminal Justice Reference Service, PO Box 24036, Southwest Post Office, Washington, DC 20024 by the Center for Women Policy Studies et al., funded by the Law