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Reviews
"Days of Infamy: Great Military Blunders of the 20th Century"
One of those mistakes was this book.
By Mark Schone
[08/30/99]

Ivory Tower
Misadventures in Marxism
How can well-meaning American academics continue their romance with Karl Marx? European scholars can only guess.
By Lawrence Osborne
[08/30/99]

Interview
Spiritual Chapter 11
Novelist David Gates talks about his overeducated, self-tormenting characters, the genius of Dickens and the seductive pursuit of perfect taste.
By Michele Scarff
[08/27/99]

Ivory Tower
Bone wars
Are we not who we thought we were? A boy's 25,000-year-old remains call into question our very roots and kick up a nasty battle among scientists.
By Juno Gregory
[08/27/99]

Reviews
"Coal to Cream"
An African-American writer discovers a raceless society in Brazil -- or so it seems at first.
By Casey Greenfield
[08/27/99]

Complete archives for Books

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Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
The car salesman. The longeurs and the accountancy deceits are beautifully wrought. Rabbit's shafting by a Toyota rep, Mr. Shimada, defines a time in the 1980s of American industrial nervousness.

Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
The journalist. Frayn is perhaps England's greatest comic writer. Grubby, compromised hacks haven't been done better since Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop." (The book was also published with the title "Against Entropy.")

The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
The astronomer. A huge entity hovering near earth turns out to be a colossal intelligence. It's completely unimpressed by our civilization; some Beethoven sonatas hold its attention for a while.

Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
The musician. A wonderful evocation of a young man's mastery of the technique of the classical piano. Conroy is a fine jazz player, with a highly regarded "walking" left hand.

Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood
The paleontologist. The mind of a scientist neatly inhabited, while the chosen field of the heroine offers some useful, extended metaphors for sexual complication.
salon.com | Aug. 30, 1999

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