Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White book by Frank H. Wu
Peter Ibbetson
It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Yale. I am attending one of the accompanying lectures when a graduate student comes up to me, an Asian American, and asks…
Peter Ibbetson
Monograph: We Built This Suburb by Carey Seal
Everyone agrees that America’s cities are in trouble. The familiar complaints about “urban blight” and overcrowded slums now seem almost quaint compared to the actual problem of wholesale desertion: the…
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 book by John Updike reviewed by Charlotte Dewar
Looking Backward A compendium of the early work of an American literary master In his 1986 introduction to a set of Paris Review interviews, John Updike quoted Philip Roth: “What…
Party of the People book by Jules Whitcover Grand Old Party book by Lewis L. Gould reviewed by David Noyola
Bipartisan Reading Incisive accounts of the Democratic and Republican parties When the tenor of politics is inflamed, partisan bickering precludes historical perspective. As attacks and recriminations pile up, politicians and…
Profs’ Picks
What’s on the nightstand of Yale’s Professors Dudley Andrew Professor of Comparative Literature, Co-Chair & DGS of the Film Studies Program I’m such a follower when it comes to “free…
Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear book by Jim Steinmeyer reviewed by Kirsti Potter
The Magic Touch An insider explains the history of stage illusions From time to time, magic and its modern practitioners still steal into the spotlight—even without counting the wily tricks…
Rules of Engagement book by Anita Brookner reviewed by Jessica Wheeler
Playing by the Rules In her twenty-second novel, Anita Brookner stays true to form In response to Anita Brookner’s third novel, critic Caryn James referred to what had at that…
Finis by Joshua Foer
“We have arrived at the Brave New World that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings being born in what he called a `hatchery.’” So…
War Talk by Arundhati Roy, reviewed by Kanishk Tharoor
War Talk by Arundhati Roy South End Press, 152 pp, $12.00 reviewed by Kanishk Tharoor After winning the Booker Prize for her first and only novel The God of Small…
The Furies by Fernanda Ebserstadt, reviewed by Daniel Kluger
The Furies by Fernanda Ebserstadt Knopf, 464 pp, $26.00 reviewed by Daniel Kluger The Furies, Fernanda Eberstadt’s fourth, and most ambitious, novel to date, examines the complexities of motherhood, femininity,…