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★★★★☆ The American language is a pastiche of borrowed words from across the world. We borrowed from British English, of course. Then words and phrases (“hunters’ moon,” for example) were appropriated from Native Americans...
★★★☆☆ The Expectations by Alexander Tilney is an exploration of the difference between the main character’s hopes for his boarding school experience and the reality he encounters. At St. James boarding school, Ben wants...
★★★★☆ A few years ago, the David Zwirner gallery empire launched David Zwirner Books, a publishing imprint that would produce and distribute not only their exhibition catalogues but also the occasional book of archival...
★★★★★ As a creator and lover of story, I have always idolized Paul Simon, a man’s whose songs often have sweeping narratives crammed into four elegant lines. In addition to being musically brilliant, his...
★★★☆☆ Tom Coyne’s goal was to play “107 practice rounds,” the number of golf courses in Scotland, in 56 days in hopes of refining his game so that he could qualify for the Open....
★★★☆☆ Selva Almada’s debut novel The Wind That Lays Waste is set up as a carefully orchestrated morality play: when a reverend’s car breaks down, he and his daughter are forced to spend a...
★★★★☆ The Northwest Ordinance passed Congress “without the least variation” on July 13, 1787. It created a territory that encompassed the eventual six states from Ohio and west around the Great Lakes to Wisconsin...
★★★★☆ Regina Porter’s debut novel casts a big, wide, engrossing net of an intergenerational family saga. It starts in the 1950s and ends in the Obama era. It follows not one but two parallel...
★★★☆☆ Sam Lipsyte’s Hark plays like an inside joke that requires prerequisite familiarity with the author’s sensibility. There’s absolutely talent on the table here, an intriguing blend of the offbeat charm of George Saunders...
