Book Reviews by Jason Sullivan

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Just when you think you’ve already heard the most daring of…

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

We meet “the girl” as she runs through a land that’s “innocent…

His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine by S.C. Gwynne

Word association with “airship” probably yields responses…

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How vast individual wealth is amassed often hits its mark in…

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

There’s a refrain that spans time and distance. When circumstances…

Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau

A perk of landing at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport is the…

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe

If you peruse a public library’s nonfiction section, you’ll…

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard

The Victorian era conjures much to mind, and it’s often a word…

Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids by Scott Hershovitz

At the risk of alienating some readers right from the jump, I’ll…

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black

It’s something we know without recalling perhaps when and where…

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

If you are of a certain age, you may recall Jonathan Franzen,…

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones

Pity the Middle Ages, so often derided as the dreary placeholder…

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Heist tales lend themselves well to a cinematic telling. The…

Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy and the New Battleground of the Cold War by Jeff Shesol

Shared national narratives matter. They cohere generations around…

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Character-driven versus plot-driven stories: Readers of literary…

Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer

Tales of polar expeditions haunt because we know how they end.…

Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis

A frequently asked question of authors in "The New York Times…

The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter

If there's one college course that seems to fall into the "liked…

The Silence by Don DeLillo

Illusory though it is, there's an endorphin-rush moment when…

The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann

East Berlin, early November 1989. Protestors seeking political…

The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency by John Dickerson

The time is nigh, fellow citizens. This Tuesday, we shall exercise…

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson

History runs through St. Louis like a current. It’s downtown…

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godrfey-Smith

You and I stand on one of evolution’s most privileged branches.…