Peter Ibbetson
Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam book by Gilles Kepel reviewed by Mahbod Moghadam
By December 29, 1999, Abdel Wahab al-Effendi had been convinced of Islamism’s failure. Why should you care? He is a…
Secrets of the Tomb book by Alexandra Robbins reviewed by Emma Pollack-Pelzner
An initiation involving coffins and naked mud wrestling, thousands of dollars given to members upon graduation, and financial support of…
Old Gods Almost Dead: the 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones book by Stephen Davis reviewed by Colleen Carey
How do you write a 560-page book about the Rolling Stones without using the word “egotist”? Stephen Davis, the author…
Monograph: The Professor in the Storm Cultural Historian E.H. Gombrich’s Troubled Achievement by Susannah Rutherglen
Sir Ernst Gombrich, the venerable humanist and scholar of art who died last year at the age of ninety-two, was…
The Art of Travel book by Alain de Botton reviewed by Thomas Cannell
As the British broadcaster Bernard Falk once said, “Americans are rather like bad Bulgarian wine; they don’t travel well.” Perhaps…
How to Be Alone book by Jonathan Franzen reviewed by Daniel Barrett
The penis goes by many names: “dipstick,” “peenie-weenie,” “lovepump,” “wonder worm.” Jonathan Franzen culls these synonyms from a list of…
The Writer and the World book by V.S. Naipaul reviewed by Timothy Bradley
V. S. Naipaul was born into a world where books made little mention of life as he knew it. The…
The Seal Wife book by Kathryn Harrison
Kathryn Harrison’s most recent novel is a finely detailed if somewhat dull historical fiction that considers the development of one…
April Witch book by Majgull Axelsson
The award-winning Swedish novel April Witch is the dark and powerful tale of Desirée, a severely disabled woman abandoned at…
House of Women book by Lynn Freed
“My mother keeps every key to her house on a ring attached to her bag,” says seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Thea early in…