American writer Anthony Marra began winning major literary awards when he was still in his 20s. He won seven for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. But he deserves another one simply for having the guts to write it. The book’s setting is the Caucasus, no less, and during the worst of...
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England’s Tudor Dynasty (1485-1603) encompassed the reign of five monarchs. But just three of them ruled for a combined total of more than a century: Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509), Henry VIII (1509-47), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) They ushered in unprecedented change in England’s fortunes,...
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Only once in the past 15 years since I began reviewing books have I written about anything without reading it to the end. But I’m about to break that rule for a second time. I’m doing so to convey some of what I’ve learned about the use of artificial intelligence as it might...
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Version 1.0.0 You might not think a biographical novel about a glamorous Hollywood star could figure in the history of World War II. But then you wouldn’t reckon with the Austrian American actress Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000). Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna to a nonobservant Jewish father and...
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The tagline on the cover is tantalizing. “A young man uncovers a hidden past,” it reads, “while another becomes its echo.” The resulting dual-timeline story, grounded in 1957 and 1941-45, traces the experiences of two German teenagers and their families. One seeks 12 years...
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For the first two decades in the reign of England’s notorious King Henry VIII a Catholic priest loomed large behind the throne. Named the king’s almoner in 1509, the year Henry’s father died, he ascended over the years from the priesthood to a cardinal’s hat as Henry named...
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One day in 1480 a nameless nobleman and a priest show up at Will Collan’s farm. They’ve come for his 12-year-old son, John. As they explain to the boy, he’s not John Collan but a legitimate claimant to the English throne. As a small child, his partisans had hidden him away in the...
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As every native San Franciscan can tell you, Emperor Norton was one of a long line of unforgettable characters who have helped give San Francisco its distinctive reputation. He proclaimed himself “Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico” in 1859, ruling his vast domain...
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Does it sometime seem to you as though Indian novelists are muscling into the ranks of top English-language writers, making their way onto the best-seller lists and snapping up a disproportionate share of the literary awards? No? Think of Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Chanda,...
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Henry VIII gets a lot of attention from historians, biographers, and novelists alike, but not for the wisdom of his policies as king. In fact, you might say the only good thing he did for his people was to father the child who became Queen Elizabeth I. In her four decades on the throne, Elizabeth...
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Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were placed in a tub of cement. Twelve gunmen stood waiting until they got far enough out to sea to throw him overboard.” Thus opens Dennis Lehane’s action-packed novel, Live by Night. It is 1926, years...
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Most accounts of World War II show Winston Churchill facing off alone against Adolf Hitler as he rallied the British people to unprecedented heights of heroism. But “Winston wasn’t alone during World War II—even though he’s always pictured that way.” As Marie Benedict shows in her...
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How is it that an otherwise supremely talented author would choose to write a book about a character nobody could ever love? I understand cranky people. And the chronically pessimistic. I have my moments, probably more than my share. But Deidre van Deventer, the protagonist of Karen...
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M. T. Anderson won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for one novel and was a finalist for two others. But he writes for adults too, and brilliantly, as his most recent work makes clear. Nicked is historical fiction. But it’s also fantasy. And it blurs the line into...
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The main event at the Scottish psychiatric hospital Craiglockhart is the arrival of Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) in the summer of 1917. The celebrated young poet had recently circulated an anti-war message attacking Britain’s political leaders. He charged that “the war is being...
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When you think about it, slaves in the American South during the 19th century spoke a different language from their masters. Whites could sometimes barely understand them, and the reverse must have proven true at times as well. So novelist Percival Everett turns this insight on its head in James,...
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The 10 books highlighted here may not be the very best novels written about World War II. But they are the best ones I’ve read and reviewed since January 2010. I’ve given every one of them a rating of ★★★★★. There’s a second list below that includes some four dozen runners-up. All are novels...
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A young Chinese man sold by his uncle to work in a San Francisco laundry. The film star Anna May Wong, who could never achieve the stardom she coveted. A young Chinese American man murdered by two drunken White men, mistaken for the Japanese who had “stolen” American jobs in the 1980s....
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Few remember them today, but in the 1930s there were Nazis in America. Lots of them. And tens of millions of Americans supported them in the depths of the Depression. The Silver Shirts. German-American Bund. Friends of the New Germany. And Father Charles Coughlin’s weekly pro-Nazi and...
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When most Americans think of revolution, our minds leap to Russia a century ago and the chaotic events that gave rise to the Soviet Union. But a century from now our great-grandchildren will likely think first of another revolution that is proving to be equally consequential in historical terms—if...
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...includes summaries and links to all of the week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.