Book Reviews by Jason Sullivan

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

One not-small benefit of working at a library trucks with it…
Read more
Lazarus Man by Richard Price

Lazarus Man by Richard Price

If you’ve watched HBO’s The Wire, then you’re familiar…
Read more
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

It’s little wonder that Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake made…
Read more
The Friday afternoon club by Griffin Dunne

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne

The celebrity memoir. The decision to read one is subject to…
Read more
The Situation Room by George Stephanopoulos

The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos

We arrive, fellow citizens, at the fleeting moments of a presidential…
Read more

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko

Have you ever thought about hopping into the Grand Canyon and…
Read more

Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria

If you’re still on the prowl for this summer’s beach read,…
Read more

You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue

Hernán Cortés meeting Moctezuma in 1519 holds some space in…
Read more

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

In Crook Manifesto, the always excellent Colson Whitehead takes…
Read more

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

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

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

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

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…
Read more

Trust by Hernan Diaz

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

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

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

Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau

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

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

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

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

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

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

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

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

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

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…
Read more

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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

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

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

Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis

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

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…
Read more

The Silence by Don DeLillo

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

The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann

East Berlin, early November 1989. Protestors seeking political…
Read more

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

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

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…
Read more

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.…
Read more