Jim Motavalli

Reading The Singer Sisters, what comes immediately to mind is not the soap-opera-like drama of Fleetwood Mac circa 1977’s Rumours, but the thinly veiled miniseries made of those s

“Roxana Robinson is one of our best novelists, writing about mature people and their very real emotions.”

“Paul McCartney, put it well. He said she had ‘the best female voice in the world, melodic, tuneful, distinctive.’”

This is, depending on how you look at the oeuvre, Patti Davis’ fifth book about her parents, the Reagans, though you only learn about one of the others from the “Also by Patti Dav

The fathers and mothers who came home from World War II suffered from some reentry problems (see the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives) but for the most part these members of the Great

“Herold really goes to town reporting, and it’s an impressive book that deserves your attention.”

This book answers its own question pretty early on.

“Mistress of Life and Death is a very upsetting account, but a necessary one. As the author writes . . .

Author Dan Callahan specializes in big biographies of stars such as Barbara Stanwyck and Vanessa Redgrave. He profiled Alfred Hitchcock, looked at the art of screen acting, and wrote a novel, too.

The Velvet Underground, playing music far ahead of its time in mid-60s New York, has always been more written about than actually heard.

In the popular imagination, the phrase “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” is attributed to the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill and to Colonel Israel Putnam of Connecticut,

Now here’s an interesting premise for a book: Jason Thomas Gordon, lead singer and drummer of the LA-based rock group Kingsize, interviews dozens of vocalists, some of them very prominent, about .

The relationship between journalist and subject is an ancient one, and the ice is frequently broken with the hoisting of a glass . . . or two.

Fact: Global warming will cause rising temperatures and sea levels, stronger storms, desertification, water shortages, heat waves, flooding and more, creating innumerable “climate refugees.” Since

“funny, well-written and an absolute blast to plow through.”

“It all adds up to a slightly nasty book whose pages turn easily . . .”

“a short book but a visceral one.”

It’s not about the cars, and it’s not about the coffee.

Nicholas Dawidoff set out to tell the story of a tragic miscarriage of justice in a small New England city.

“There have been other books about the polygamist Mormons in Mexico, some of them first-hand accounts.

It’s not surprising that there are several books called Survival of the Richest—it’s rather an obvious title—and it’s also not surprising that Naomi Klein calls this one “a vital, lucid, a

Let’s get this out of the way first: Stella does not talk.

If all you know about stewardesses (make that flight attendants) is based on the bestseller Coffee, Tea or Me, a salacious tell-all 1967 memoir by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones, then you’re

The author of this book, veteran terrorism expert Nelly Lahoud of the New America Security Program, sifted through 96,000 declassified files (and 6,000 Arabic pages) seized from Osama bin Laden’s c

There are celebrity autobiographies that put the author in the best possible light, with every awkward moment surgically excised.

Anyone with a drug or alcohol dependency problem will, at least some of the time, feel that nobody knows their pain.

“This is Joella’s first novel, and it’s an assured performance, full of nicely observed detail. It may not have a Big Theme, but it has lots and lots of heart.”

It’s nice to know where we come from. Some folks are still taking it hard that we descended from apes, but there are new discoveries all the time.

“England sleeps still from valley to hill.” That’s a line from a song by Amazing Blondel, a British group that imagined an Arcadian rural past.

“Berger does a great job here of not only profiling SpaceX, but also capturing the total brinksmanship of its swashbuckling founder.”

The short stories in Mary-Beth Hughes’ collection The Ocean House are linked, not by the titular manse—the last of the great seafront houses in Long Branch, New Jersey, its property covete

In 2012, a Damascus, Oregon woman named Julie Keith tore open a package of inexpensive Halloween decorations—fake tombstones—and out fell a piece of paper.