Ghost Light: A Memoir , by Frank Rich. Random House, 315 pages, $24.95.
The theater, Moss Hart explained, is the “inevitable refuge of the unhappy child.” Hart, one of the most successful playwrights and directors of the 20th century, endured severe poverty in his Bronx childhood before he reached the heights of Broadway success. Once Read More
American National Biography , by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, general editors. Oxford University Press, 24 volumes, $2,500.
The American National Biography is a literary milestone, a kind of Human Genome Project for the advancement of historical understanding. Here, in 24 volumes and 17,453 life sketches, is the DNA of who and what Read More
Herman Melville , by Elizabeth Hardwick. Lipper/Viking, 161 pages, $19.95.
The English excel at writing brief lives, a pocket-size genre long on style, short on facts. Invented by the second-century Roman historian Suetonius ( Lives of the Caesars ), aped by John Aubrey as an alternative to 17th-century dinner-party gossip, epitomized by Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Read More
Rembrandt’s Eyes , by Simon Schama. Alfred A. Knopf, 750 pages, $50.
In 1987, Simon Schama’s English publisher proposed that he write an account of the French Revolution to coincide with the 1989 bicentennial. Mr. Schama, London-born, Cambridge-educated, had for 20 years been a Dutch historian, interpreting the golden age of the Netherlands through the Read More
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2, 1933-1938 , by Blanche Wiesen Cook. Viking, 686 pages, $34.95.
The big story with Eleanor Roosevelt was change. She began as a sheltered Hudson River Valley aristocrat and ended up a radical world citizen, the universally respected “First Lady of the World.” As the 20th century’s most influential woman, a selfless Read More
Morgan: American Financier , by Jean Strouse. Random House, 796 pages, $34.95.
As Information Age speculation remakes American wealth on a scale not seen since J. Pierpont Morgan strutted onto the world banking stage, the lives of our founding financiers are undergoing necessary rehabilitation. Last year’s Titan , Ron Chernow’s life of John D. Rockefeller, Read More
The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in 19th-Century New York , by Patricia Cline Cohen. Knopf, 412 pages, $27.50.
On April 10, 1836, at the age of 23, Helen Jewett was hatcheted to death in the brothel bed where she had made her living in Manhattan’s Fifth Ward. The Read More
A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr , by Arnold A. Rogow. Hill and Wang, 351 pages, $27.50.
One hundred and ninety-four years ago, long before schoolchildren found less elaborate ways to unleash aggression with guns, two rival New York politicians met each other at a discreetly hidden dueling ground in Weehawken, N.J. There, Read More
Love stories are never simple. Even for the most conventional couples, there are at least three versions of the story: his, hers and theirs. In the case of William Shawn, the late editor of The New Yorker who was married for 64 years to the former Cecille Lyon, there turns out to have been not Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
