August 26, 2016
By: DAVID HUGH SMITH For most of us, a long-distance swim is a few extra laps at the pool; the biggest danger – getting elbowed by another swimmer. For Diana Nyad, a long-distance swim was a 110-mile odyssey from Cuba to Key West, Florida. And danger? There were toxic box jellyfish, and sharks that make no...
By: BUDD SCHULBERG Muhammad Ali is our black Paul Bunyan, except that Bunyan’s superhuman exploits were fables and Ali’s are real. He is not merely our most famous heavyweight champion; indeed, with all respect to Joe Louis, Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, the most venerated of our celebrated athletes, he managed to reach...
August 25, 2016
By: JANICE P. NIMURA ”I once had a girl / Or should I say, she once had me,” go the opening lines of ”Norwegian Wood,” the Beatles song whose title Haruki Murakami borrowed for his 1987 novel. It happens to be a neat summary of Murakami’s basic plot: boy falls for complicated girl and is...
August 24, 2016
By DONALD BARR This book is about pietism in Harlem and, of the three sorts of novel (string, wind and percussion). It belongs to the first. It does not produce its story as an accumulation of shocks (as most novels of Negro life do), or by puffing into a rigid metaphysical system (as most novels...
August 23, 2016
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books that almost everyone reads at some point in their lives. Whether you’ve been forced to read it at school, or you’ve had a look because everyone’s been urging you to, most people have their own personal experience of reading Mockingbird. The book is about Atticus Finch,...
August 21, 2015
By: JAMES M. MCPHERSON MORE books about Abraham Lincoln line the shelves of libraries than about any other American. Can there be anything new to sayabout our 16th president? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Having previously offered fresh insights into Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedy’s and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an elegant, incisive...
By R. B. BERNSTEIN When and how did the United States become a nation? This question is the core of “The Quartet.” In his customary graceful prose, Joseph J. Ellis, the author of such works of popular history as the prizewinning “Founding Brothers,” argues that the United States did not become a nation with the Declaration of...
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch Peak – Chip Conley Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Drive – Dan Pink Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh Made to Stick – Dan & Chip Heath Switch – Dan & Chip Heath Influence – Robert Cladini Jobs –…
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishguro
Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X and the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
Influence – Robert Cialdini