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In praise of higher learning

Feature | Literature
2010-2-7

OF the top 20 universities in the world, according to one 2008 reckoning, just three were outside the United States. Of the top 50, just 14 were. American colleges and universities are unquestionably pre-eminent in...

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Too thick with detail

Feature | Literature
2010-2-7

A prominent historian once asked if I didn't get tired of the sort of research novelists often feel obliged to pursue. Must we really know how 19th-century Latvian lumberjacks brushed their teeth? Aren't you tempted...

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A couple corroding

Feature | Literature
2010-2-7

THE first lurch comes four lines in. A woman named Irene America is writing in one of her diaries. She is keeping two: one real, one fake. "You gave me the first book in order to record my beginning year as a mother,"...

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Just not pho real

Feature | Literature
2010-2-7

DESPITE being a regional culinary neighbor, the authenticity of Vietnamese food in Shanghai leaves one staring despondently into their bowl of pho. Such was the doleful expression of my dining companion as he peered...

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Tenderly to the power of myth

Feature | Literature
2010-1-24

NEITHER the early life of Priam, the elderly king of Troy, nor his miserable and bloody fate are direct concerns of the "Iliad." The Homeric epic opens in the 10th year of the Trojan War, and it draws toward its suspenseful...

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Case of disappearing crime novel

Feature | Literature
2010-1-15

A mysterious murder occurs and multiple suspects turn up. Several people have motives and it's up to a righteous and dedicated policeman to solve the case, with the help of his honorable and tireless colleagues. ...

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How to lose the plot

Feature | Literature
2010-1-10

DOUGLAS Coupland, zeitgeist chronicler, furniture designer and defender of the Helvetica font, may or may not be interested in saving the world. But in his 11th novel, "Generation A," he not only addresses a contemporary...

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Loving and losing in the killing fields

Feature | Literature
2010-1-10

KIM Echlin's novel "The Disappeared" contains many elements that might doom a lesser book: the deaths of multiple characters (among them the narrator's baby); an unabashedly effusive love story; a mix of first-and-second-person...

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Suburban conformity revealed

Feature | Literature
2009-12-27

LAUREN Grodstein's second novel, "A Friend of the Family," is set primarily in the very recent past, but it reads like an exercise in nostalgia for the heady days before the global economic collapse, when a solidly...

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A tale for Eyre fans

Feature | Literature
2009-12-27

IT is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath," Charlotte Bronte wrote of her sister Emily's novel, "Wuthering Heights." The Brontes brought a new emotional weather to the English novel - stormy, blasted...

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How Darpa merges humans, machines

Feature | Literature
2009-12-27

TWO years ago, in his book "Rocketeers," Michael Belfiore celebrated the pioneers of the budding private space industry. Now he has returned to explore a frontier closer to home. The heroes of his new book, "The Department...

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Remarkable lady with 'moxie'

Feature | Literature
2009-12-13

BEST known for reminding her husband, John, and his fellow revolutionaries in 1776 to "remember the ladies," Abigail Adams made a far more rebellious statement 40 years later. At age 71, she wrote her will, ignoring...

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Nature now predator

Feature | Literature
2009-12-13

NOT long ago I strolled through Longyearbyen, in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The place was bear crazy. Polar bear iconography appeared everywhere: on T-shirts, coffee mugs, sweaters and holiday ornaments....

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Brilliant 'Satchmo' transcended critics

Feature | Literature
2009-12-13

ONE of the hardest parts of writing a biography is finding a fit subject, but sometimes they're in plain sight. Despite his incalculable contributions to American culture, there has never been a fully adequate narrative...

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Godfather of Japanese detective stories inspired by Sherlock

Feature | Literature
2009-12-10

THE godfather, sometimes called the god, of Japanese mystery fiction recently drew crowds of Chinese mystery fans from around the country who came to hail the man who brought back classic detective yarns. Soji...