Editorial reviews

Though not necessarily for newbies—again, see Paradise Lost—Life After Death does a solid job of charting the horrific journey through his weary eyes.

Laura Lamont’s Life In Pictures is just enough in love with its world to empathize with Laura’s loss of perspective, but not too much to judge its excesses and faults honestly.

This is the rare celebrity autobiography that peaks before the author does whatever made her famous enough to land a book contract.

Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.

This diligently researched and masterfully written exposition will appeal to Anglophiles and fans of literary biography.

A persuasive case for retooling how activists think and talk about matters of the wallet.

This novel will enchant Jio’s fans and make them clamor for her next offering.

A devious intimation of homegrown terrors likely to keep readers awake long after closing time has come and gone.

Unexpected, drily funny and full of the pathos and wonder of life: Don't miss it.

This book will appeal to the spiritually minded.

Despite the repetitiousness and pretentious hyperbola that drags on this novel, Kahlo remains a rich character and inevitably irresistible.

Beard’s take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing—and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously.

There’s a point in the narrative where one of the characters becomes so engrossed in reading a book that she loses track of time. Readers of Genova’s latest excellent offering might very well find the same happening to them.

This is an important book not only because of what it has to say about a man of principle who, under the threat of violence and death, stood firm for freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but also because of its implications about our times and fanatical religious intolerance in a frighteningly fragile world.

He writes about the bitterness he felt at darker moments, thinking that his biggest problem “was that he wasn’t dead”: “if he were dead, nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of his security and whether or not he merited such special treatment for so long.”

“Joseph Anton” is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year.

The story of Rushdie's time in hiding is one of excessive anxiety, constant security and trying desperately to figure out how to fight your way out. In many ways, he lived the post-Sept. 11 story before it even happened.

Joseph Anton, obscuring these stumbles, presents Rushdie as confidently in step with the march of history.

The result, as in “Fall of Giants,” is an honorable piece of popular entertainment and a consistently compelling portrait of a world in crisis.