Books
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Purging Books, Making Art and Ruling Chicago
An editor recommends two escapist biographies.
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An Eccentric Victorian, His Book and the Giant Pink Pastry of a House He Inspired
Has any man in history loved anything as much as Orson Squire Fowler loved the octagon? Fowler, born in Cohocton,…
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Read Your Way Through Appalachia
Barbara Kingsolver, whose Pulitzer-winning “Demon Copperhead” offered a variegated portrait of the region, guides readers through a literary landscape “as…
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What Does It Mean to Be a Witness?
In his new story collection, Jamel Brinkley investigates the impact of seeing and being seen.
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Obsessed with the Ocean, Susan Casey Takes the Plunge
Susan Casey has long been enchanted by the deep ocean. For her book “The Underworld,” she finally got to visit…
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Read Your Way Through Maine
Reading and writing are deeply valued in Maine. The novelist Lily King recommends fiction, nature writing, memoirs, children’s books and…
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After a Great Flood, a Struggle Between Faith and Reason
Khaled Khalifa’s new novel follows two friends through disaster and religious tension in early-20th-century Syria.
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What Does it Mean to be Blind? A Writer Chronicles The Loss of His Vision
In “The Country of the Blind,” Andrew Leland explores the history, the culture and the experiences of blind people
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In Milan Kundera’s Work, the Erotic Meets the Subversive
It’s hard to overstate how central Milan Kundera was, in the mid-1980s, to literary culture in America and elsewhere. He…
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A Cult ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ Amid the New York Brownstones
In “The Sullivanians,” Alexander Stille recalls the heyday of an experiment in communal living that blurred the boundaries between therapists,…