Bodega Dreams By Ernesto Quiñonez (Fiction)
Vintage Contmporaries, reviewed by Anderson Tepper
A streetwise, darkly lyrical first novel celebrates Spanish Harlem.
(03/16/2000)

"Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal" By Richard Wightman Fox (Nonfiction)
University of Chicago Press, Reviewed by Stephen Prothero
A beautifully written book about a sensational 19th-century sex scandal unravels stories wrapped in stories about what really happened.
(12/15/99)

Men in Black By John Harvey (Nonfiction)
University of Chicago Press, reviewed by Bruce Barcott
An historical investigation of that most fashionable and funereal of all sartorial choices, wearing black.

Parting from Phantoms: Selected Writings, 1990-1994 By Christa Wolf (Nonfiction)
University of Chicago Press, reviewed by Rob Spillman
Essays, lectures, interviews and journal entries from the prickly, passionate and controversial East German writer.

Viridian By Paul Hoover (Fiction)
University of Georgia Press, reviewed by Albert Mobilio
Four new collections by contemporary poets, ranging from pop culture savvy, to tropical lyricism, to mild naturalism, to the lacerating riddles of a mind on fire.

Rich Media, Poor Democracy By Robert McChesney (Nonfiction)
University of Illinois Press, Reviewed by Dustin Beilke
A communications authority eyeballs the current media merger mania and offers some hard and fast suggestions for doing better.
(11/22/99)

American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party
By Frederick J. Simonelli (Nonfiction)
University of Illinois Press, reviewed by Katharine Whittemore
A new biography explores the life and legacy of America's premier fascist.
(07/19/99)

Rogue Ambassador: An African Memoir By Smith Hempstone (Nonfiction)
University of the South Press, Reviewed by Lance Gould
This boisterous memoir, from the Bush administration's ambassador to Kenya, brims with offensive remarks about blacks, Jews, women -- you name it.
(08/06/98)

Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood By Eileen Whitfield (Nonfiction)
University Press of Kentucky, reviewed by Charles Taylor
Whitfield combines a great command of narrative with an unerring perceptiveness in this superb biography of the silent film star.

Childhood By Patrick Chamoiseau (Nonfiction)
University of Nebraska Press, Reviewed by Anderson Tepper
The novelist's second memoir celebrates a boyhood spent in a storytelling family among the riotous richness of Martinique's Creole culture
(02/23/99)

A FEELING FOR BOOKS: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire By Janice A. Radway (Nonfiction)
University of North Carolina Press, reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir
An exhaustive study of the Book-of-the-Month Club, by an academic who cheerfully admits her middlebrow reading tastes

Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me By Jaime Manrique (Nonfiction)
University of Wisconsin Press, reviewed by Daniel Reitz
A writer considers his place in the pantheon of homosexual Hispanic letters.
(06/25/99)

The Judge and the Historian By Carlo Ginzburg (Nonfiction)
Verso, Reviewed by Jonathan Groner
Denouncing a miscarriage of justice, a historian compares Italy's courts to the Inquisition's.
(08/13/99)

Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1991-1995 By Jean Baudrillard (Nonfiction)
Verso, reviewed by Scott McLemee
Journal entries from the ultra-hip, post-everything French intellectual, on such subjects as sex, America and the information revolution.
(12/01/97)

Washington Babylon By Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein (Nonfiction)
Verso, reviewed by Phil Leggiere
Gonzo-style political muckraking, from two seasoned left-wing journalists, modeled after Kenneth Anger's classic book "Hollywood Babylon."

Imagineering Atlanta By Charles Rutheiser
(Nonfiction)
Verso, reviewed by Paul Tullis
An historical and political overview, just in time for the 1996 Olympics, of Atlanta's tranformation into something like the Los Angeles of the Southeast.

"The Custom of the Sea" by Neil Hanson and "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick (Nonfiction)
review by By Mark Schone
Two new books serve up hair-raising histories of maritime cannibalism with all the gory details. (04/13/00)

Buddha's Little Finger By Victor Pelevin (Fiction)
Viking, review by Craig Offman
In a novel by turns shabby, sexy and visionary, the Russian virtuoso captures post-perestroika Moscow in all its weirdness. (05/05/00)

Ravelstein By Saul Bellow (Fiction)
Viking, review by Lorin Stein
The Nobel laureate offers a fictional portrait of his gay friend Allan Bloom -- and of the erotic fulfillment he himself found late in life. (04/14/00)

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea By Charles Seife (Nonfiction)
Viking, review by Gavin McNett
It's weird, it's counterintuitive and the Greeks hated it. (03/03/00)

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason By Helen Fielding (Fiction)
Viking, review by Maria Russo
She's back, she's got her weight down, she's got Mark Darcy and she's in a Thai jail on drug charges.
(02/29/00)

S.: A Novel About the Balkans By Slavenka Drakulic (Fiction)
Viking, review by Brigitte Frase
A fierce novel brings home the horrors of the Bosnian war -- rape, torture and the sexual slavery of Muslim women.
(02/08/00)

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad By David Haward Bain (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Katharine Whittemore
It's sprawling and overloaded with facts, but this account of the building of the transcontinental railroad does justice to one of the great American achievements.
(11/15/99)

Disgrace By J.M. Coetzee (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir
The winner of the 1999 Booker Prize is a bleak tale of human and animal misery in post-apartheid South Africa
(11/05/99)

Saint Augustine By Garry Wills (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Allen Barra
The newest title in the Penguin Lives series is swift, invigorating and disappointing.
(06/29/99)

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing By Melissa Bank (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams
The novel may mock the literature of man-trapping, but it's still too gentle by far.
(06/15/99)

The Spell By Alan Hollinghurst (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
Alan Hollinghurst returns with variations on a gay quartet.
(04/29/99)

An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England By Venetia Murray (Nonfiction)
Viking Books, Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams
Regalese: A new history sheds dazzling light on extravagantly eccentric Regency England
(03/31/99)

Marcel Proust By Edmund White (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Peter Kurth
The first in a new series of brief biographies demonstrate that bigger isn't always better.
(01/28/99)

Crazy Horse By Larry McMurtry (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Peter Kurth
The first in a new series of brief biographies demonstrate that bigger isn't always better.
(01/28/99)

Hip Hop America: Hip Hop and the Molding of a Black Generation X By Nelson George (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Charles Taylor
A survey of hip hop's history and cultural influence, from a talented writer whose arguments with the music never overwhelm his love for it.
(11/17/98)

Death in Summer By William Trevor (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Dan Cryer
In this stark and often violent rendering of Britain's class divisions, a young shoplifting runaway becomes a nanny at a stately country home.
(09/25/98)

BASQUIAT: A Quick Killing in Art By Phoebe Hoban (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Alissa Lara Quart
A biography of the first black American artist to achieve international stardom, who overdosed on heroin at age 27
(07/23/98)

Riven Rock By T. Coraghessan Boyle (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Peter Kurth
A thrilling, true historical tale about a socialite who fought to save her schizophrenic husband from a slew of doctors and hangers-on
(01/28/97)
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The Unfinished Presidency By Douglas Brinkley (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Theo Spencer
An account of Jimmy Carter's manic post-presidential activities -- peace-making, election monitoring, etc. -- from a well-known historian.
(05/19/98)

The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings By Wei Jingsheng (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Mark Hertsgaard
Fierce, earthy, crusading prison letters from a Chinese dissident who ranks with the 20th century's great freedom fighters.

Monkey Bridge By Lan Cao (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Elizabeth Judd
This first novel, by a young Vietnamese-American writer, has juicy generational angst worthy of an Amy Tan novel.

We're Right, They're Wrong By James Carville (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Stefanie Syman
A smart, home-spun set of bullet points -- a virtual pep rally -- for Democrats, via the feisty former Clinton campaign manager.

Desert Places
By Robyn Davidson (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Megan Harlan
The author, a well-known travel writer, recounts a difficult year spent with the Rabari, camel-raising nomads of northern India.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors By Roddy Doyle (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Charles Taylor
The author of last year's "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" delivers a clear-eyed novel told by a battered woman whose family is on the verge of falling apart.

A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution By Orlando Figes (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Katharine Whittemore
A young historian who writes with a novelist's touch offers perhaps the best (and most readable) chronicle yet of the Russian Revolution.

Robertson Davies: Man of Myth
By Judith Skelton Grant (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Joan Smith
The definitive biography of the late novelist reveals a defiant eccentric with a powerful inner life.

Journals By Keith Haring (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Susan Shapiro
Haring, a pop artist best known for his primitive dancing figures, died in 1989 of AIDS. This volume collects letters, reminiscences and unpublished work.

The Flaming Corsage By William Kennedy (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Robert Spillman
The sixth book in the Pulitzer-Prize winning author's Albany Cycle is an intricate -- and passionate -- look at Albany's lower class Irish immigrants at the turn of the century.

Desperation By Stephen King (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by John Mello
The Regulators By Richard Bachman (Fiction)
Dutton, reviewed by John Mello
Two deeply intertwined new novels, from America's most popular horror writer, with the grandiose arc (and gore) of his earlier epics.

Some of the Dharma By Jack Kerouac (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Stephen Prothero
A hodgepodge of the writer's poems, prayers, sermons, commentaries, dream sequences and journal entries about Buddhism (11/17/97)

Kinski Uncut By Klaus Kinski(Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Dwight Garner
A raw and misanthropic memoir of compulsive sexual conquest, by the German star of "Fitzcarraldo" and "Nosferatu."

The Practice of Writing By David Lodge (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Jennifer Howard
Sane and gentlemanly literary essays, on his own work and others', from the well-known British novelist ("Small World," "Nice Work").

Jackson's Dilemma By Iris Murdoch (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by James Marcus
The master novelist tells of a group of couples who reshuffle partners thanks to the angelic intervention of a mysterious butler.

My Year of Meats By Ruth L. Ozeki (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Nina Mehta
A first novel, from a young filmmaker, about the making of a documentary series about the meat industry for Japanese TV
(07/01/98)

Larry's Party By Carol Shields (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
A novel about a small-town florist turned maze-designer from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Stone Diaries."

In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters By Diane Schoemperlen (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Kate Moses
A quirky and moving assessment of the memories, hopes and misapprehensions of a young woman, revealed in her responses to 100 innocuous words.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking By Rebecca Solnit (Nonfiction)
Viking, review by Andrew O'Hehir
A delightful and mind-expanding look at one of the activities that makes us human. (04/27/00)

The Queen of Whale Cay By Kate Summerscale (Nonfiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Charles Taylor
A slim biography of a true eccentric -- a crossdressing lesbian who was a WWI ambulance driver and the world's fastest speedboat racer
(06/09/98)

After Rain By William Trevor (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Charles Taylor
Short stories, set in rural Ireland, by a writer with a genius for getting at the texture of parched lives.

Kowloong Tong, The Collected Stories By Paul Theroux (Fiction)
Houghton Mifflin and Viking, reviewed by Dwight Garner
An abrupt and often nasty novel about Hong Kong and a devastatingly fine collection of stories, both by the well-known author and travel writer.

Boyhood: Scenes From A Provincial Life By J.M. Coetzee (Nonfiction)
Viking, reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir
An account of the award-winning author's childhood in white South Africa and his painfully self-consciousness younger self.

Blue Bossa By Bart Schneider (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Peter Kurth
A memoir by a former New York Times Book Review editor about her poor upbringing on Chicago's South Side
(03/06/98)

The Atlas By William T. Vollmann (Fiction)
Viking, reviewed by Jim Paul
In this compelling mix of fiction and autobiography, the author, an obsessive traveler with a taste for danger, reports from locations such as Sarajevo, Inuit Canada and Rangoon.

ONE NATION, AFTER ALL: How the Middle Class Really Thinks About God, Country and Family By Alan Wolfe (Fiction)
Viking, Reviewed by Laura Green
A sociology professor argues, after extensive polling, that Americans are nicer and have more in common than we'd ever imagined
(03/16/98)

Left for Dead: My Journey Home From Everest By Beck Weathers (Nonfiction)
Villard, review by Jonathan Miles
A member of Jon Krakauer's ill-fated Everest expedition gives his version of the spring '96 mountaintop disaster. (04/25/00)

The Requiem Shark By Nicholas Griffin< (Fiction)
Villard, review by Steve McQuiddy
Pillage and murder at sea: There really was a Black Bart, and he really did capture 400 ships in four years. (04/10/00)

Running to the Mountain: A Journey of Faith and Change By Jon Katz (Nonfiction)
Villard, Reviewed by Stephen J. Lyons
A writer heads for the wilderness to seek his soul, armed with a monk's writings, a laptop and, after a while, a satellite dish.
(03/02/99)

Not Exactly What I Had in Mind By Rosemarie Breslin (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Susan Shapiro
A tart memoir about living with a life-threatening blood disease, from the journalist daughter of famed newspaperman Jimmy Breslin.

Pass the Butterworms: Recent Journeys Oddly Rendered By Thomas Cahill (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by David Futrelle
A pioneer of non-macho adventure travel writing reports from the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Mongolian steppes and other locales.

The Vagina Monologues By Eve Ensler; foreword by Gloria Steinem (Nonfiction)
Villard, Reviewed by Sara Kelly
An adaptation of the author's award-winning off-Broadway show, featuring 15 often comic meditations on the female anatomy
(02/04/98)

Dick for a Day Edited by Fiona Giles (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Christine Muhlke
What a difference a dick makes -- or so say the 52 female writers, poets and artists asked: "What would you do if you had one?"

The Student Body By Jane Harvard (Fiction)
Villard, Reviewed by Peter Kurth
"Jane Harvard" is the nom de plume of several recent Harvard graduates, collaborators on a novel about an Ivy League prostitution ring.
(05/04/98)

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster By Jon Krakauer (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Charles Taylor
A writer for Outside magazine describes his experiences on Mount Everest when a disastrous blizzard struck, killing 10 people.

Into the Wild By Jon Krakauer
(Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Dwight Garner
The true story of Chris McCandless, a young idealist who gave away everything he owned and marched into the Alaskan wilderness in search of "raw, transcendent experience." His body was found a few months later.

Abbreviating Ernie By Peter Lefcourt (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
This wickedly comic novel, about a woman who lops off her (dead) husband's penis, is the satirical follow-up to "Di and I."

The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume 1) By Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Douglas Brinkley (Nonfiction)
Villard, reviewed by Charles Taylor
A collection of early letters from the gonzo journalist and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" author, covering the years from 1955 to 1967.

I'm Losing You By Bruce Wagner (Fiction)
Villard, reviewed by Dwight Garner
An arch, over-the-top satire of modern Hollywood, peppered with tart jokes about cellular phones, starlets and H.I.V.I.P.s.

Peace and Its Discontents By Edward Said (Nonfiction)
Vintage, reviewed by Matthew Dallek
Essays on the Middle East peace process, from the noted Palestinian literary critic and scholar.

The Guilt of Nations By Elazar Barkan (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton & Co., review by Jonathan Groner
Are reparations the best way to address slavery, genocide and other past evils? (05/02/00)

Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell By Lyall Watson< (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton & Co., review by Maggie Jones
How we smell, why we smell and (best of all) what we smell: A guide to the most provocative, sensual and misunderstood of the senses. (03/31/00)

Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy By Frances Kiernan (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton & Co., review by Pam Rosenthal
A host of gossips weighs in on the left-wing scrapper and wickedly erotic novelist. (03/08/00)

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir By Michael Holroyd (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton & Co., review by Janice P. Nimura
The distinguished British biographer turns the spotlight on his dubious family and himself. (03/02/00)

The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes By Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton & Company, Reviewed by Dante Ramos
Grappling with America's tortuous tax policies.
(03/18/99)

A Tale of Two Utopias By Paul Berman (Nonfiction)
W.W. Norton, reviewed by Phil Leggiere
Berman, a prominent social critic, traces the various political uprisings of 1968 through the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Galileo's Daughter By Dava Sobel (Nonfiction)
Walker and Co., Reviewed by Casey Greenfield
The life of the heretical Italian scientist, gleaned from the loving, protective letters of his illegitimate daughter.
(11/11/99)

Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil By Rafael Yglesias (Fiction)
Warner Books, reviewed by Robert Spillman
A big, rambling and ambitious novel about a psychotherapist who believes he can rid people of their darker impulses.

Circling the Drain By Amanda Davis (Fiction)
Rob Weisbach Books, reviewed by Polly Morrice
A debut collection by a writer with nerve runs the gamut from conventional to the experimental.
(06/07/99)

"Music for Torching" By A.M. Homes (Fiction)
Rob Weisbach Books, Reviewed by Courtney Hudak
Is A.M. Homes the master of shock or the mistress of schlock?
(05/05/99)

Misadventures in the (213) By Dennis Hensley (Fiction)
Rob Weisbach Books, Reviewed by Austin Bunn
Shallow riffs on Los Angeles and its discontents, from a young Detour magazine columnist.
(07/14/98)

IL CUORE: THE HEART: Selected Poems 1970-1995 By Kathleen Fraser (Fiction)
Wesleyan University Press, Reviewed by Albert Mobilio
Reviews of four recent -- and notable -- collections of poetry, from masters such as James Tate and Margaret Atwood as well as newcomers such as Joshua Clover
(03/04/98)

Dining Out: Secrets from America's Leading Critics, Chefs, and Restaurateurs By Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (Nonfiction)
Wiley, Reviewed by Dwight Garner
A dishy look at how America's most noted food critics (Ruth Reichl, Patricia Unterman, Gael Greene) go about their work.
(10/23/98)

In the Family Way: An Urban Comedy
By Lynne Sharon Schwartz (Fiction)
William Morrow and Company, reviewed by Polly Morrice
A master chronicler of family life considers love and sex at the end of the '90s.
(09/30/99)

Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair By Cameron Stracher (Nonfiction)
William Morrow, Reviewed by Yunah Kim
Underwhelming yarns of plantation life among the hypocrites and social misfits of a big-name Manhattan law firm.
(01/15/99)

Scorpion Tongues By Gail Collins (Nonfiction)
William Morrow, Reviewed by David Futrelle
An often entertaining account of American political scandal and gossip, from Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton.

Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia By Robert Greenfield (Nonfiction)
William Morrow & Co., reviewed by Richard Gehr
The private life of the charismatic guitar hero demonstrates that, among other things, no man is a hero to his drug dealer.

CLONE: The Road to Dolly, and the Path Beyond By Gina Kolata (Fiction)
William Morrow, Reviewed by Etelka Lehoczky
From the New York Times science writer, a level-headed look at cloning and its discontents
(01/06/97)

Funny Boy By Shyam Selvadurai (Fiction)
William Morrow, reviewed by A. Scott Cardwell
A promising first novel, from a young Sri Lankan writer, about love, race and politics, set amidst the 1983 Sinhalese-Tamil riots.

Taliban By Ahmed Rashid< (Nonfiction)
Yale University Press, review by Jonathan Groner
A veteran journalist relates the full horror -- brutality, oppression of women and genocide -- of the new Afghanistan. (04/06/00)

China Chic By Valerie Steele and John S. Major (Nonfiction)
Yale University Press, Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
Foot binding was barbarous, but that doesn't mean the shoes weren't fabulous.
(04/30/99)

"The Stakeholder Society" By Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott (Nonfiction)
Yale University Press, Reviewed by Dustin Beilke
Give everybody $80,000. After that they're on their own.
(04/28/99)