Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World’s Most Powerful University, by Richard Bradley. HarperCollins, 400 pages, $25.95.
Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, by Ross Gregory Douthat. Hyperion, 304 pages, $24.95.
What is Harvard that we are mindful of it? That’s the question raised by Privilege: Read More
Sammy’s Hill , by Kristin Gore. Miramax Books, 368 pages, $23.95.
This is how Sammy’s Hill came to be: Last spring Harvey Weinstein, the co-head of Miramax Films, ran into Kristin Gore, daughter of the former V.P., at a benefit for a charity Ms. Gore’s older sister, Karenna Gore Schiff, works with. Mr. Weinstein Read More
Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer , by Richard Holmes. Pantheon, 420 pages, $30.
British biographer Richard Holmes is intimate with literature’s greats. He’s a natural gossip with an eye for detail: Shelley had a library on his doomed sailboat; Boswell thought of patenting a device that slid the sleeper out of bed automatically. He Read More
City of God , by E.L. Doctorow. Random House, 272 pages, $25.
Is it possible to capture the human condition in 270 pages? In City of God , his 10th work of fiction, E.L. Doctorow gives it a try.
City of God has many voices and many time frames. It has poetry, Holocaust memoir Read More
Shakespeare’s 21st-Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money , by Frederick Turner. Oxford University Press, 223 pages, $35.
Every economic and political system needs a philosopher to stamp the lives of the rank and file with meaning, a wise man to tell the people who they are. There could be no true Romans before Read More
Juneteenth , by Ralph Ellison. Random House, 368 pages, $25.
Oh, has a novel ever had a murkier provenance than this one? I mean, fires and file cabinets with multiple drafts and handwritten notes on loose pieces of paper and a widow who changed her mind? “The real quality of the paint is always determined Read More
The World Through a Monocle: ‘The New Yorker’ at Midcentury , by Mary F. Corey. Harvard University Press, 251 pages, $25.95.
Anyone involved in creating or canonizing The New Yorker of the 40′s and 50′s will hate Mary Corey’s The World Through a Monocle: ‘The New Yorker’ at Midcentury . That’s my guess. But I Read More
The Ground Beneath Her Feet , by Salman Rushdie. Henry Holt, 575 pages, $27.50.
A slow moderating trend in Iranian politics at last resulted in the cancellation of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. At least that’s the idea. I pray all the mullahs heard the word. On the assumption that Mr. Rushdie will be allowed Read More
Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made , by David Halberstam. Random House, 426 pages, $24.95.
Now that he’s gone–he says it’s “99.9 percent” certain–we’re ready for the summing up. But we’ve already been at it for years. Larry Bird, early in Michael Jordan’s career, called him a god in human form. Read More
The Crime of Sheila McGough , by Janet Malcolm. Alfred A. Knopf, 164 pages, $22.
Does the law require you to be wary of a man who sends you flowers? Must you ask why when a convicted felon wants to use your bank account to receive a wire transfer? Is giving your fellow man the Read More
