Jonah Raskin

Ancestors and forerunners show up in the annals of American literature more often than readers imagine.

Ben McGrath has a journalist's nose for news and telling details and a novelist's ability to tell a suspenseful story with vivid portraits of ordinary people such as Richard Conant, who did extraor

“This book is for art lovers, and lovers of beauty and truth who value the human spirit that will not be denied by the destructive forces that humans have created.

The characters in Alison Stine's new novel, her second, have names like Trillium, Rattlesnake Master, Shanghai, Miami, and Coral, a young woman who was abandoned by her mother and who has lost her

“In Annals, Diane di Prima’s imagination is on fire and her memory is as precise as ice.

Near the end of his endearing memoir, App Kid, the author, Michael Sayman, describes a talk he delivered at Menlo College—in the very heart of Silicon Valley—where he revealed what he call

“By describing her own journey, Chicago offers an unglamorous view of the life of an artist who became famous as well as infamous . . .”

Timothy Brennan begins his intellectual and political biography of Edward Said—the Palestinian American literary critic, gadfly, and largely self-appointed global diplomat—on a somber note.

Natalie Baszile first caught a whiff of fame with her novel, Queen Sugar, that was adapted for TV and co-produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey.

This book might have been subtitled An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing.

The “mystery” in the subtitle of this compelling biography of the media mogul, Robert Maxwell, is how and why his big body was found floating face up in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, not far fr

At the start of Alison Stine’s first novel, Road Out of Winter, the protagonist, a young woman named Wylodine (known as Wil) leaves her rural home in Ohio and sets out for California.

What’s new and especially refreshing about Diane Cook’s new novel, The New Wilderness, are the finely drawn women characters, especially Bea and Agnes, refugees from “The City,” who are ca

Auschwitz, Buckenwald, Bergen-Belsen: the names are familiar to readers who have taken an interest in the German concentration camps that operated from the mid-1930s until 1945, when Russian soldie

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote famously in the first sentence of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Robert Stone seemed to come out of nowhere when he published his first novel, A Hall of Mirror in 1967, though he had a substantial apprenticeship, including a couple of years in the famed

“An Old Man’s Game doesn’t just offer light entertainment, though there is plenty of that.

“This book will probably not comfort readers troubled by the present moment, but it will provide them with a clear view of a fractious past, and encourage them, in the words of the Civil Ri

After Leonardo Di Vinci there was Rembrandt and before Picasso there was Rembrandt.

“By following her own path, Messineo offers a sense of direction to those who are unmoored or feel lost at sea.”

“plunge into Kushins’ uncommonly empathetic biography of the man who wrote ‘Send Lawyers, Guns and Money,’ and much more, and who contributed to the great body of American folklore and lege

“The Damascus Road might be read as a parable of our own times with its mad men, visionaries, true believers, and pagans . . .”

“The story of Onwuachi’s climb up, with its attendant pitfalls, is masterful.”

Irish men love to write about Irish boyhoods.

“The Women’s Suffrage Movement is for men as much as it is women. It’s for everyone, no matter what their sex, gender, ethnicity, or the color of their skin.

“Go Ahead in the Rain is a musical memoir in which the narrator comes of age and becomes a man.”

Tom Smucker loves the Beach Boys, though he’s not in love with them right now.

History of Violence is not, as the title suggests, a big, fat tome about human aggression, brute force, and cruelty, though it describes a world in which violence shapes the life of the na

REVIEW AND AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

British author George Orwell once described hospitals as “ante-chambers to the grave.” It’s not difficult to understand why.

Contemporary readers probably won’t recognize the name Edward Garnett, not unless they’re students and scholars of modern British literature.

At first glance, the author and the subject of this book seem mismatched. Singer, songwriter, bard, and Nobel Prize winner, Bob Dylan, is the subject.

“What She Ate is for foodies, fashionistas, feminists, and for anyone who enjoys reading about meals as much as eating them.”

Books take us hostage and transport us to times and places where we ourselves can’t go, whether it’s to a remote tropical island or to the Parthenon in ancient Greece.

Sherman Alexie’s compelling memoir offers a mix of poetry and prose that links emotional intimacy to a powerful narrative that will likely keep readers off balance.

“an author who has carved out her own territory and made the personal essay into a thing of beauty.”

Denied the kind of shapely body and beautiful face that made Hollywood producers see stars, but gifted with a razor-sharp mind and a motor mouth, Joan Alexander Molinsky made the best of her talent

As a boy and a young man, Robert Gottlieb read for the love of reading itself. Later he read because his career demanded that he do so.

Thad Carhart seems to have led a charmed life.

After the release of his quirky 2014 movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, director/writer Wes Anderson confessed to The Daily Telegraph in London, “I stole from Stefan Zweig,” though n

Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, the worldwide grassroots organization, and the author of Slow Food Nation, exudes so much joy, hope, and optimism in his new book that it’s hard no