ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE: A ONE-NIGHT STAND, MY UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD, AND LOVING THE BEST MISTAKE I EVER MADE
By Mary F. Pols
Ecco, 272 pages, $24.95
A few years ago, Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children sparked a media firestorm by arguing that many women end up husband-less Read More
KYRA
By Carol Gilligan
Random House, 241 pages, $25
Carol Gilligan is one of the most influential feminist social theorists of her time. She’s also one of the least rigorous. Now she’s written a novel. It makes perfect sense: Why bother with real people whose experience may not conform to your Read More
STARBUCKED: A DOUBLE TALL TALE OF CAFFEINE, COMMERCE, AND CULTURE
By Taylor Clark
Little, Brown, 297 pages, $25.99
When New York’s first Starbucks opened in 1994, it wasn’t greeted with alarm, as phase one of an insidious plan to colonize the city. In that innocent era, Starbucks, with a mere 425 stores—compared to more Read More
You know those little turquoise boxes from Tiffany’s, the ones with a big white bow? Apparently, they are among the great icons of the world—up there, I suppose, with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower. At least, that’s what Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said at Wednesday's grand opening of the Read More
In New York, the culture wars aren’t over abortion and gay marriage—we are far too sophisticated to disagree about those sorts of issues!—but over 46-story condo-hotels in SoHo.
Specifically, the one that was officially unveiled to reporters Wednesday at a heavily guarded and extremely lavish press conference (picture red carpets; chandeliers large enough for Read More
THE HOUSE THE ROCKEFELLERS BUILT: A TALE OF MONEY, TASTE, AND POWER IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA
By Robert F. Dalzell Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell
Henry Holt, 333 pages, $30
Is a house a metaphor? Robert and Lee Dalzell would say so. In The House The Rockefellers Built, they argue that Kykuit, the Read More
THE LATE BLOOMER’S REVOLUTION: A MEMOIR
By Amy Cohen
Hyperion, 288 pages, $23.95
Yet another memoir of a privileged young woman’s search for love in the big city. One dreads the tone of complaint: “How could this happen to me? I’m smart, successful and attractive—how can I be single?” The real question is Read More
DIARY OF A REAL ESTATE ROOKIE: MY YEAR OF FLIPPING, SELLING, AND REBUILDING—AND WHAT I LEARNED (THE HARD WAY.)
By Alison Rogers
Kaplan Publishing, 215 pages, $14.95
Alison Rogers is a very likable person.
It’s a good thing, because her new book, Diary of a Real Estate Rookie, is only loosely Read More
Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas
By Rick Moody
Little, Brown, 223 pages, $23.99
Rick Moody’s fiction has always had a strong topical streak: He’s as concerned with particular aspects of contemporary American society—the barrenness of mass consumerism, say, or the tragically limited economic and aesthetic scope of the lower middle-class, or the dangers Read More
CONQUERING GOTHAM: A GILDED AGE EPIC: THE CONSTRUCTION OF PENN STATION AND ITS TUNNELS
By Jill Jonnes
Viking Adult, 368 pages, $27.95
Most of us know how the story of the original Penn Station ends: The breathtakingly grand neoclassical structure—designed to be a suitably splendid entryway to the nation’s largest city—was razed by the cash-strapped Read More
