Book Review | featured news

In a bizarre story in The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that a court in Paris will shortly decide whether a law professor in New York committed criminal libel by publishing a book review.

But goodness as it turns out is elusive and not terribly interesting for the same reason most books about yoga are unreadable: No one wants to hear about how good you are. We want to hear about how you tried to be good and fell short. And by doing just that, "Poser" achieves something rare: It's a contemporary book about yoga that doesn't leave you squirming, suspect or bored.

But Dr. Brown has a unique distinction: He was, for a few hours in 2005, the only person on Planet Earth to know that the standard nine-planet solar system model was going to require rejiggering. He had just discovered a 10th potential planet, but he had also come to see that neither Pluto nor this new heavenly body (first nicknamed Xena, then officially named Eris) really measured up to the other eight.

"Our Kind Of Traitor" By John LeCarrePittsburgh Post-Gazette "Inevitably it is also about loyalty, honesty and bravery, and their often crucial roles in traitorous acts. The deliberately ambiguous first words of the title invite us to look carefully at the characters, both present and absent, involved in a plot inspired by a little noticed but deeply troubling news item (included at the end of the novel)."

The ex-president gives a sense of day-to-day life in the Oval Office — and plays the blame game. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover might be bracketed together for a number of reasons.

I envy writers of medical history, especially those who can create a really good read.

The June 14 issue of The New Yorker, perhaps the premier showcase for American fiction, features a list of “20 Under 40” — that is, 20 accomplished writers under the age of 40. Many of the names are familiar: Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, Rivka Galchen, Nicole Krauss, Gary Shteyngart, ZZ Packer, Wells Tower.

The novelist Philip Kerr has just given Allan Massie a thorough kicking on Amazon for his book, The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family that Shaped Britain.

Exercising a crafty fascination for the intricacies of repetitive behavior, Scott Turow brings back Rusty Sabich, now a judge and on trial again, 23 years after “Presumed Innocent.”

Alan Brinkley’s biography of Henry Luce, the creator of Time and Life, who used his magazines to push political favorites and promote U.S. intervention in the world.