There is much history to celebrate on America’s 250th birthday at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the oldest public rare book collection in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731. Forty-five years older than the country itself, the landmark nonprofit once extended borrowing privileges to delegates of the First and Second Continental Congress…
Imagination was not George Orwell’s forte. In each novel the protagonist is to some extent an Orwell surrogate doing things that Orwell did in places where Orwell had been. Here, somewhat unconvincingly, the author’s representative is a repressed young woman, Dorothy Hare, who loses her memory, identity and faith. Orwell considered it “tripe” except for…
Jane Yolen, a children’s author who wrote some 450 books in practically every conceivable genre, including history, how-to, science fiction and poetry, and whose immensely popular children’s books, rich in folklore and fantasy, earned her the nickname “America’s Hans Christian Andersen,” died on Thursday at her home in Hatfield, a town in western Massachusetts. She…
John Basinger, an actor and college professor widely believed to be the only person ever to have memorized all 12 books of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” — a feat he turned into a one-man show that inspired research into the workings of memory — died on May 29 in Brookings, S.D. He was…
An American flag flies at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, on Sept. 12, 2025. Mario Tama | Getty Images Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday reported a staggering net loss for the first quarter, but it has an explanation. The company booked a net loss of $2.9 billion, far larger than the net loss of…
Recently, readers have been all a-flutter over the publication of Patrick Radden Keefe’s richly reported new book, London Falling. Reviews of the celebrated writer’s exploration of the death of an English teenager embroiled in the murky worlds of crime and the ultra-rich have been rapturous. The podcast interviews are plentiful and images of the fresh…
Nineteen books were recognized as winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize on Monday, in the categories of fiction, general nonfiction, memoir or autobiography, poetry, biography and history. Fiction Angel Down by Daniel Kraus This dizzying and fantastical story — one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2025 — is about a group…
biography Homesick for a World Unknown by Miriam Horn In her engaging, lyrical book, Horn tells the story of the famed naturalist George Schaller, who went to the Belgian Congo in 1959 to study mountain gorillas. (He would go on to work with other animals, including Brazilian jaguars, Indian tigers and Serengeti lions.) Schaller, Horn…
Luke Kennard, writer This is a really good year for new fiction. I don’t think anyone writes about contemporary Englishness as astutely, mercilessly and affectionately as Claire Powell, and her latest novel, All In, puts her perfectly observed characters in the pressure cooker of an all-inclusive holiday. It’s a kind of meta-beach read, and I…
Rears & Vices by E.M. Caro Spring is the ideal time of year for a salt-crusted, grog-drenched pirate romance — and Caro’s REARS & VICES (Tides & Troth, 367 pp., paperback, $18.99) was everything I wanted. Our men have some impressive Age of Sail names: Everard Anderson de Anglada is a British Navy captain on…
