Book Review

Highlights

  1. His Book Was Repeatedly Banned. Fighting For It Shaped His Life.

    “The Chocolate War,” published 50 years ago, became one of the country’s most challenged books. Its author, Robert Cormier, spent years fighting attempts to ban it — like many authors today.

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    Cormier spent years defending his books: “I’m weary of the battle, but a tired fighter can still be a fighter.”
    Cormier spent years defending his books: “I’m weary of the battle, but a tired fighter can still be a fighter.”
    CreditPaul Miller/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images
    1. Rare Editions of Pushkin Are Vanishing From Libraries Around Europe

      Dozens of books have disappeared from Warsaw to Paris. The police are looking into who is taking them, and why — a tale of money, geopolitics, crafty forgers and lackluster library security.

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      More than 170 rare books have vanished, replaced by very high-quality fakes. This reproduction of a first edition of an 1822 book by Alexander Pushkin was found at the University of Warsaw library, in Poland.
      More than 170 rare books have vanished, replaced by very high-quality fakes. This reproduction of a first edition of an 1822 book by Alexander Pushkin was found at the University of Warsaw library, in Poland.
      CreditWojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
  1. Paul Auster’s Best Books: A Guide

    The novelist played with reality and chance in tales of solitary narrators and mutable identities. Here’s an overview of his work.

     By

    Paul Auster (in 2009) is best known for “The New York Trilogy,” a triptych of quasi-detective novels.
    CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
  2. Robert Kagan Takes the Long View on Trumpism

    His essay warning that dictatorship was a real threat went viral, which prompted the early release of “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again.” To relax, he reads the sports pages.

     

    CreditRebecca Clarke
    By the Book
  3. Paul Auster’s New York Tragedy

    A complicated, generous life yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety.

     By

    Paul Auster’s paragraphs were a moving sidewalk — it was more comfortable to ride than to hop off — so you could read him for hours, as his plots twisted and turned.
    CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
    An appraisal
  4. The Book Review’s Best Books Since 2000

    Looking for your next great read? We’ve got 3,228. Explore the best fiction and nonfiction from 2000 - 2023 chosen by our editors.

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    CreditThe New York Times; Photo by naphtalina/Getty Images
  5. She Wrote ‘The History of White People.’ She Has a Lot More to Say.

    “I Just Keep Talking,” a collection of essays and artwork by the historian Nell Irvin Painter, captures her wide-ranging interests and original mind.

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    “Blue Nell on Kaiser With Jacob Lawrence’s Migrants,” a digital collage on paper by Nell Irvin Painter from 2010.
    Creditvia Nell Irvin Painter
    Nonfiction

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  1. She Wrote ‘The History of White People.’ She Has a Lot More to Say.

    “I Just Keep Talking,” a collection of essays and artwork by the historian Nell Irvin Painter, captures her wide-ranging interests and original mind.

     By

    “Blue Nell on Kaiser With Jacob Lawrence’s Migrants,” a digital collage on paper by Nell Irvin Painter from 2010.
    Creditvia Nell Irvin Painter
  2. Inside MAGA’s Plan to Take Over America

    “Finish What We Started,” by the journalist Isaac Arnsdorf, reports from the front lines of the right-wing movement’s strategy to gain power, from the local level on up.

     By

    Steve Bannon recording his podcast “War Room” from his basement in Washington, D.C., in October 2023. Bannon has been an influential promoter of the MAGA movement’s “precinct strategy.”
    CreditErin Schaff/The New York Times
  3. Anne Lamott Has Written Classics. This Is Not One of Them.

    Slim and precious, “Somehow: Thoughts on Love” doesn’t measure up to her best nonfiction.

     By

    CreditLourenço Providência
  4. Long Before Trump, Immigrant Detention Was Arbitrary and Cruel

    “In the Shadow of Liberty,” by the historian Ana Raquel Minian, chronicles America’s often brutal treatment of noncitizens, including locking them up without charge.

     By

    The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, was built in 2014 to house up to 2,400 undocumented women and children.
    CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
  5. Salman Rushdie Reflects on His Stabbing in a New Memoir

    “Knife” is an account of the writer’s brush with death in 2022, and the long recovery that followed.

     By

    CreditClément Pascal for The New York Times
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  3. Paul Auster’s Best Books: A Guide

    The novelist played with reality and chance in tales of solitary narrators and mutable identities. Here’s an overview of his work.

    By Wilson Wong

     
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