Mongo: Adventures in Trash , by Ted Botha. Bloomsbury, 243 pages, $23.95
This is the ideal time to release Mongo: Adventures in Trash , Ted Botha’s paean to the garbage foragers of New York. All summer long, as students vacate their dorms and prosperous young families head to the beach, the city’s curbs fill Read More
Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, by Phillip Lopate. Crown Publishers, 421 pages, $25.95
Acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate, who grew up in the crowded slums of Williamsburg, has long marveled at the transformation of his native city over the last half-century. In Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan , he laces up his sneakers and sets Read More
The Epicure’s Lament , by Kate Christensen. Doubleday, 351 pages, $23.95.
Kate Christensen is a serious writer: Don’t be fooled by the relentless hipness or what seems the full-throttle frivolity of her subject matter – the joke, if you don’t get it, is on you. Her first novel, In the Drink (1999), earned her wide Read More
Peyton Amberg , by Tama Janowitz. St. Martin’s Press, 335 pages, $24.95.
Trashy books fall into two basic categories: first, those bodice-rippers with puffed fuschia-lamé lettering and “sizzling!” blurbs by daytime-soap stars. This group includes Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz-authors who know exactly what they do and love it, and drive red Read More
