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Books
Our reviewers comb through each week’s new arrivals looking for books worthy of your time. Read our reviews, and other stories about books, here.
Tale of terror and survival at sea
“Overboard!” is every sailor’s nightmare — being swept out to sea in a storm and left to battle the full fury of the open ocean.
‘The Final Salute’: Giving ‘voice to these ghosts’
Kathleen Rodgers dates her initiation into the supposedly glamorous fighter pilot community to a day in Tucson, Ariz., three weeks after her wedding. Her husband, an F-111 pilot transitioning to the...
The best military books of the decade
The mission: Select the best military nonfiction of the decade. First, assess the situation. Stand at the bookcase and pull the books that stand out. Then enlist help.
Reading lists
Other suggestions from notable readers and writers:
Combat catharsis
“The man on my right was killed and the man on my left was killed and I was alive in the middle of them,” said former Army Capt. Nate Self, describing his mission to help rescue a Navy...
The Things They Wrote
Among the latest batch of memoirs to come from Iraq and Afghanistan are a few that may become classics:
Getting it down
Putting pen to paper is the first step to telling your story. Army Capt. Mike Warren, an English instructor at the U.S. Military Academy who ran a project to gather narratives from soldiers and edit...
Bradbury’s ‘451’ bursts into pictures
Fifty-six years after Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 in nine days — it came like an “explosion” of words, he says — his science-fiction classic is being...
‘Last journey’: A father finishes what his son started
Darrell Griffin Sr. and his son, Darrell “Skip” Griffin Jr., agreed to co-write a book of philosophical conversations when Skip first deployed to Iraq in 2004. They wrote until Skip was...
Jerked back
As you were? Go back to what you were doing as a citizen before you were a soldier in combat?
Inside Pakistan’s paranoia
An early June headline in The Washington Post: “Pakistan says tide has turned in Swat; refugees not so sure.”
New biography gets to the heart of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gerald Martin’s biography of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, is so terrific, it makes a reviewer want to lurk around bookstores, urging...
Uranium Nation
The most remarkable thing about the element uranium isn’t its value or its ability to destroy entire cities, but rather the extraordinary lengths man has gone to get the stuff.
Spy novelist Ignatius back in operation with ‘The Increment’
Journalist/novelist David Ignatius says he loves “the tension between fact and fiction,” which explains why he continues to write newspaper columns on foreign affairs and spy novels...
50 top-selling books
USA Today calculates a list of best-selling books each week. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 2 million volumes from...
Book details Paul Newman’s charmed, and charming, ‘Life’
Readers flipping through the nearly 500 pages of the richly researched “Paul Newman: A Life” looking for juicy gossip will have to be patient. It takes until the halfway mark before pay...
WWII’s ace shooters
Long before the days of digital cameras and thousand-photo-capacity memory cards, the pioneer technicians of photography were at work in a relatively new field during World War II, doing things the...
Author gets ‘Lost’ in nature, touts kids’ environmentalism
When Deanna Neil was a child, she used to pick up debris in her neighborhood and read books about the environment. Now she is writing children’s historical novels with environmental themes.
WWII’s ace shooters
Long before the days of digital cameras and thousand-photo-capacity memory cards, the pioneer technicians of photography were at work in a relatively new field during World War II, doing things the...
‘Admission’ unseals hushed secrets behind ivied walls
At the end of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s wise and engaging novel about a college admissions officer, the main character is advised by a friend, “You could always write a book. Doesn’t...
Quinn Bradlee, son of ‘Post’ power duo, writes of disabilities
WASHINGTON — Quinn Bradlee was born with more than a few advantages. He has famous parents: former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and journalist Sally Quinn. And he grew up in a...
From baby to blog to memoir for Heather Armstrong
Heather B. Armstrong has been blogging since 2001 about depression, childbirth and parenting on her Web site, dooce.com, which averages 1.5 million visitors a month. Now she has written a memoir,...
Mosley’s hero in ‘The Long Fall’ is easy to like
Fans of Walter Mosley’s intelligent, no-nonsense mysteries starring Easy Rawlins howled with dismay when the 10-book series, which began with “Devil in a Blue Dress,” ended in 2007...
Biographer praises Ida B. Wells, anti-lynching crusader
On Sept. 15, 1883, a young black teacher in Memphis, Tenn., boarded a Chesapeake & Ohio Railway train, intending to ride in the first-class car. “She carried a parasol — a...
Novelist Jim Lehrer is still swinging for the fences
WASHINGTON — Jim Lehrer, prolific author and anchor of “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS, often goes to his hometown of Wichita, checks into a hotel, and writes.
A soldier is educated in ‘The Unforgiving Minute’
Former Army Capt. Craig Mullaney admits up front that, emotionally, he takes after his expressive Irish mother, who is “incapable of stemming a tear.”
Corrosive realities underpin remarkable ‘American Rust’
Beautiful writing about bleak realities may sound like a contradiction, just like the setting of “American Rust” — a Pennsylvania steel town — is beautiful country, if only...
‘Well-Dressed Ape’: Humorous look into evolutionary mirror
Science journalist Hannah Holmes started connecting with nature as an infant at her family farm in Maine. Not only did she grow up tending to farm animals, but, with both parents working as...
Baum’s ‘Nine Lives’ reveals many faces of New Orleans
Anyone with more than a passing interest in New Orleans and its fate after Hurricane Katrina surely is fatigued today by the volume of commentary that has saturated the media since Aug. 29, 2005. Who...
Visionary mom sold America on Barbie
Seems like only yesterday the little girls of the Baby Boom were playing with their Barbies, collecting her clothes and accessories, imagining their futures. But this year, Barbie turns 50 —...
‘Last Stand’ puts you in throes of battle
The battle for Fox Hill began on a frigid November night in 1950 in the rugged mountains of North Korea. It ended Dec. 2 and instantly became, like Iwo Jima, a “signature” event in Marine...
Extortion, tech fears entangle Grisham’s ‘Associate’
Start with sex, lies and videotapes. Throw in extortion, blackmail, murder and corporate espionage. It all adds up to “The Associate,” a vintage legal thriller from John Grisham, master...
Patterson peers into oil’s dark side
Richard North Patterson is a writer with a great sense of timing. Contemporary issues provoking heated debate often turn up in his novels.
Gory, grim ‘Reaper’ has giggles, too
“Beat the Reaper,” Josh Bazell’s outrageously funny novel about a hit man turned doctor, is one book the American Medical Association won’t prescribe for you.
‘Madness’ only scratches surface
In her 2006 best seller, “Self-Made Man,” Norah Vincent followed the first rule of compelling non-fiction: Surprise the reader.
‘Last Straw’ for a wimpy, popular kid
PLAINVILLE, Mass. — Greg Heffley, aka “The Wimpy Kid,” is a wisecracking, self-centered middle-schooler whose life is filled with suburban misadventures.
‘Haunted Heart’ never tells what makes Stephen King tick
In the introduction to this unauthorized biography of one of the most prolific and commercially successful writers of our time, Lisa Rogak tells an anecdote about the trip she took to Bangor, Maine,...
Slain 1st sgt. gives fatherly advice in book
Jordan Canedy is a lucky boy, if you can call a boy without a father lucky. But most children aren’t left a 200-page journal written by their dad. A man-to-man talk of sorts.
A newsman trades fact for fiction
WASHINGTON — Leonard Downie Jr. has spent most of his life in the newsroom of “The Washington Post.” Forty-four years to be exact. He rose from summer intern to investigative...
‘Disquiet’ speaks volumes on family drama
To be sure, Julia Leigh’s sophomore work of fiction, “Disquiet,” is disquieting, a literary story of suspense and even horror.
Fifty-top selling books
USA TODAY calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA TODAY’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
‘Reading Lolita’ author breaks silence of her memories
Readers entranced by Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” her 2003 memoir about literature and intellectual freedom in Iran, will be equally fascinated by her new memoir,...
Cabot bids ‘Princess Diaries’ series farewell
Meg Cabot tools around Key West on bicycles whose colors — pink, purple and turquoise — match the covers of her popular Princess Diaries series.
New books illuminate wisdom, pathos and humor of old age
At 46, Henry Alford has written a book about old age, “How to Live: A Search for Wisdom From Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth),” which prompts a question:
Redemptive hero
Army Sgt. Richard C. Meyer knew the moment he left the scene of an intense battle in Iraq that he wanted one day to memorialize it. Having served as a machine gunner with Golf Company, 2nd Battalion,...
‘Sex and the City’ star Evan Handler pens another bio
Evan Handler lured women into loving his character, Harry Goldenblatt, in HBO’s “Sex and the City.” He was the divorce lawyer who became the unlikely, sensitive, sweet husband of...
Fifty-top selling books for Dec. 18
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Photo-driven books chronicle musicians’ journeys
Seen any good music lately? In addition to the usual holiday array of tell-alls and hagiographies, publishers are touting lavish photo-driven books certain to strike a chord with fans of rock,...
Required reading
Readers of the Military Times newspapers gave us their pick for the best book to read while on deployment. The service member with the best recommendation won a copy of “World War II: A...
Universe of science at your fingertips
USA Today’s Dan Vergano rounds up a selection of science coffee-table books. Among this year’s compendiums of nature imagery, some are big enough to serve as coffee tables themselves.
Fifty top-selling books
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Fifty top-selling books for Nov. 20
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Add ‘Eleventh Man’ to Ivan Doig’s best yarns
Ivan Doig, who blends the skills of novelist and historian, was researching another book when he lucked onto a forgotten but stunning scrap of history:
‘In Spite of Myself’ is wordy, naughty and nice
For some public figures, the memoir can be a means of self-defense or catharsis, an attempt to either justify or come to terms with one’s failings and foibles.
A Rock revival
‘‘Suddenly, the grizzled old sergeant rose, and while shouting to no one in particular, ordered everyone to … FOLLOW ME!”
P.D. James is on the case
P.D. James, the grande dame of British crime fiction, has just published her 18th novel, “The Private Patient” (Knopf, $25.95, on sale Nov. 11). It’s the 14th starring Commander...
Slavery of different sort in Morrison’s ‘A Mercy’
In print and her public persona, Toni Morrison is an original thinker. She once famously called Bill Clinton our first black president. Now in the month in which the country elected Barack Obama...
Fifty top selling books
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Hitchcock bio swoops in on leading ladies
In the history of cinema, few films have proven as durable as those that sprang from the warped psyche of Alfred Hitchcock. The rotund British-born director, whose 60-plus features included such...
Fifty top-selling books for Nov. 6
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA Today’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
‘Jurassic Park’ author Michael Crichton dies at 66
Michael Crichton, the Harvard Medical School graduate who wrote Jurassic Park, among other best sellers, and created ER, the popular TV show, is dead at age 66.
‘Poppies’ brings color, life to Indian history
India in 1838 was a steamy, festering, lucid dream that can hardly be captured in non-fiction today. So it’s our good fortune that acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh depicts that exotic and...
When science, love meet
Everyone loves a love story, especially if it involves an animal. Bookstore shelves are full of tales about the age-old bond between man and dog. Man and cat, even.
Fifty top-selling books for Oct. 30
USA Today calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA TODAY’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Praise is unanimous for ‘Verdict’
A Michael Connelly crime novel is always hotly anticipated. With his latest, “The Brass Verdict,” he has ramped up the anticipation level even higher by bringing together two of his most...
Fifty top-selling books for Oct. 23
USA TODAY calculates a list of 300 best-selling books. USA TODAY’s list is based on a computer analysis of retail sales nationwide last week. Included are more than 1.5 million volumes from...
Parallel lives overlap at last
LOS ANGELES — Approached to do a documentary about the genius father he barely knew, Mark Oliver Everett experienced familiar twinges of panic and resistance. The singer/songwriter suffered...
Updike turns his witches into elderly widows
When you’ve written a novel that features “a half-baked suburban variety of witchcraft,” as John Updike says of “The Witches of Eastwick,” “some people think...
National Book Award finalists told
Books about Thomas Jefferson’s hidden slave family, the Civil War’s unprecedented carnage and mistakes in the war on terror are among this year’s finalists in non-fiction for the...
Friend completes Spillane novel
Just before his death two years ago, crime writer Mickey Spillane called friend and author Max Allan Collins and asked him to finish a Mike Hammer novel he did not have the strength to complete.
Bio inspects Hugh Hefner’s life
Delivering a shocking, stripped-bare book about Hugh Hefner is a bit like promising an expose on Madonna. In the case of both pop culture icons, every salacious turn has been well-documented, if not...
‘Surviving Iraq,’ ‘Warrior Writers’
It’s easy to want to compare the stories in Elise Forbes Tripp’s “Surviving Iraq: Soldiers’ Stories” with reporter Trish Wood’s book of interviews called...
Be on the lookout for ‘Most Wanted’
John le Carri, master of the spy novel, is a keen observer of world events. He made his mark writing suspenseful tales of the Cold War era in such memorable novels as “The Spy Who Came in from...
A troubled nation looks to Lincoln
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Looking out over the landscape where 11,000 soldiers died during the three bloodiest days of the Civil War, historian James M. McPherson quotes the French World War I leader...
Barth latches on to foibles of the gated
You live in an upscale gated community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. You’re retired, or almost retired, and you spend your time going to progressive dinner parties with your equally...
Review: ‘The Forever War’
After three years as a war reporter in Iraq, Dexter Filkins reconnected with soldiers he had gotten to know, or the relatives of those he had seen die.
‘Widow’ pours out grief in images
NEW YORK — Eddie Torres, a Colombian immigrant who worked his way up from being a delivery boy, thought he had found his dream job as a currency broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. His first day at...
Buckley reigns ‘Supreme’
Imagine if TV courtroom queen Judge Judy looked like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, drove a cherry-red pickup and was appointed to the Supreme Court. This hot bench scenario provides the basis for...
‘After the Fire’: Friendship forged in a grueling ordeal
Robin Gaby Fisher’s moving account of two college roommates’ struggle to survive and then cope after they’re horribly burned in the 2000 Seton Hall University dorm fire is not one...
Lehane takes a detour
BOSTON — With eight novels — including “Mystic River” and “Gone, Baby, Gone” — set in his hometown, Dennis Lehane is almost as much a local institution here...
The crime that created Superman
On the night of June 2, 1932, the world’s first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton, but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland.
Moore offers his ‘Election Guide’
Michael Moore has never been shy about making a political statement. Now the liberal filmmaker (Sicko, Fahrenheit 9/11), who pleaded with Caroline Kennedy this week to become Barack Obama’s...
How Mandela won over a nation
If you have any doubts about the political genius of Nelson Mandela, read John Carlin’s engrossing book inspired by a rugby game.
Presidential race one for the books
Best-selling authors and presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain again have their names on book jackets — this time in the title only.
Review: ‘The Time Paradox’
Our attitudes toward time shape every part of our lives, and yet few recognize how this subtle fact can sabotage careers or vault them skyward, wreck marriages and make people happy (or not),...
Chong chimes in on book, reunion
Tommy Chong, 70, half of the comedy act Cheech & Chong, is on his car phone. The conversation jumps from his new book, “Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography” (Simon Spotlight...
Book Review: Lessing’s ‘Alfred & Emily’
“Alfred & Emily” is Doris Lessing’s first book since the 88-year-old British writer won the 2007 Nobel Prize. Though by no means her best book, it reveals why Lessing deserved...
‘Emma’s Table’ serves up a familiar but filling feast
The quicker you can stop fixating on the fact that the imperious perfectionist who’s the centerpiece of “Emma’s Table” is based on a certain notorious doyenne of domesticity...
Writer reads road signals
NEW YORK — “Traffic,” a new book about being trapped in our cars, began with an urge to merge.
Years later, still Oprah-worthy?
Authors who have been crowned by Oprah’s Book Club would seem to have it made for life: guaranteed sales, acclaim and sometimes a movie deal. Two former Oprah authors —Christina Schwarz...
‘Gargoyle’ coming out of the woodwork
Could a debut novel about a drug-addicted porn star, burned to a crisp in a fiery car crash, be one of the year’s hottest books?
Authors let parents find humor in serious job
Dr. Frederick Muench and his brother-in-law, Gregory Nemec, are the authors of a new book that gives parents an opportunity to see humor in what can sometimes be an overwhelming job. While “The...
Book review: ‘Palace Council’
Somewhere amid Stephen L. Carter’s verbose (more than 500 pages), over-plotted and only fitfully exciting literary novel-cum-thriller “Palace Council,” there’s a taut 98-page...
50 years of sun, fun and fame in “Hamptons’
In Dan Rattiner’s Hamptons, you won’t find any tales of PR queen Lizzie Grubman plowing into clubgoers with her SUV. Or dispatches from any of P. Diddy’s Ciroc-fueled soirees.
‘My Love’: Oates’ take on JonBenet case
For many readers, Joyce Carol Oates’ new novel, “My Sister, My Love,” will trigger a queasy sense of remorse and guilt.
1960 marked a whole new Games, world
The 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome reflected a changing world. Despite the subtitle of David Maraniss’ new nonfiction book, “Rome 1960,” it’s hyperbolic to say the Games...
Book Review: ‘The Warrior’
The book jacket displays a subtitle that doesn’t appear on the title page inside the book: “A Mother’s Story of a Son at War.”
Hollywood legends tell all this fall
Remember when Hollywood was glamorous? Lots of stars do, and they’re reliving the glory days. It seems every Hollywood celebrity of a certain age — from Tony Curtis to Robert Wagner...
Good ‘Help’ isn’t hard to find, thanks to Kathryn Stockett
The Deep South of the 1960s is the volatile setting for Kathryn Stockett’s thought-provoking debut novel about the fictional lives of black maids in Jackson, Miss., and the white women who...
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