The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places , by Laura Ingraham. Hyperion, 228 pages, $23.95.
If it turns out you and someone whose ideas you dislike dislike the same person, does that mean the two of you have something in common? Is your enemy’s enemy really your friend?
Enough metaphysics! Read More
A General Theory of Love , by Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D. Random House, 274 pages, $22.95.
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex , by David M. Buss, Ph.D. The Free Press, 258 pages, $25.
How ignorant and misguided we were, the Read More
Andy Kaufman Revealed!: Best Friend Tells All , by Bob Zmuda with Matthew Scott Hansen. Little, Brown & Company, 306 pages, $24.
What tender regard we’ve learned to show for the sensitivities of the dead, whom we treat so much more thoughtfully than we do the living. How solicitously we debate the deceased’s preferences concerning Read More
In Search of American Jewish Culture , by Stephen J. Whitfield. University Press of New England, 307 pages, $26.
Just Revenge , by Alan M. Dershowitz. Warner Books, 322 pages, $29.95.
Reading In Search of American Jewish Culture , I was reminded of the elderly family friend who used to argue so avidly and Read More
Capture the Flag , by Rebecca Chace. Simon & Schuster, 280 pages, $23.
It used to be that religion served, at least in theory, to make people act in civilized ways and to sublimate their more barbarous instincts. Once, the hope of heaven and the terror of hellfire were the carrot and stick meant to Read More
Betty Friedan: Her Life , by Judith Hennessee. Random House, 330 pages, $27.95.
Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew , by Christine Wallace. Faber and Faber, 333 pages, $27.50.
It’s hard to recall or even imagine the relief that my friends and I felt when Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch was published in 1970. Finally, a Read More
The Rise and Fall of the House of Barneys: A Family Tale of Chutzpah, Glory and Greed , by Joshua Levine. William Morrow, 256 pages, $25.
Some years ago, a friend took her 14-year-old son to the 17th Street Barneys to buy a birthday gift for his style-conscious grandfather. Dressed in full New York private Read More
The Technique of the Love Affair , by A Gentlewoman. Pantheon, 222 pages, $19.95.
Satyricon USA , by Eurydice. Scribner, 256 pages, $22.
Dorothy Parker, in her New Yorker review of The Technique of the Love Affair , a 1928 how-to manual by “A Gentlewoman,” was typically wicked and plaintive: “You know how you Read More
Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse , by Douglas Century. Warner Books, 415 pages, $25.
Several years ago, at an elementary-school Christmas play in upstate New York, I sat behind three white fourth-graders from the most remote and poorest section of the rural school district. In all likelihood, the boys had never Read More
The Extra Man , by Jonathan Ames. Scribner, 333 pages, $23.
Imagine a version of The Great Gatsby in which Nick Carraway has this teensy problem, this little tendency to cross-dress. Imagine Gatsby, Nick’s guide and entree to the seductive world of new money and old heartbreak, transformed into an elderly eccentric who dyes his Read More
