Christopher Priest was a grievously underrated novelist
His career represented a sequence of missed opportunities for the world beyond his chosen genre to recognize his skill and quiet profundity
Books
Wednesday
This month in culture: June 2024
Our guide to what should be on your radar
Friday
The problem with westerners seeking enlightenment in Asia
Christopher Harding is more tolerant than I am and has a greater affinity with the seekers. But he has written a very interesting book as a result
Wednesday
Remembering the postmodern Paul Auster
His personal life was eventful, as any good writer’s should be
Tuesday
The wild times on the late, great John Belushi’s most famous film
Daniel de Visé’s entertaining — if that is the right word — canter through Belushi and Aykroyd’s lives and times covers a fair number of bases
The ups and downs of the long road toward workplace parity
Josie Cox has persuasively documented the steady but halting progress that women have made in the workplace
The talented Evan S. Connell
He might be the greatest American novelist you’ve never heard of
Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumously published novel is unconvincing
Until August has a curiously half-baked feel, as if it’s a souvenir of a great man’s legacy rather than a work in itself
A revelatory account of the post-war exploits of the House of Windsor
Alexander Larman’s Power and Glory is a tale of survival
Sunday
Where is the clarity in modern center-right foreign policy?
Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea suggest a response to the new isolationism that is essential for understanding contemporary foreign policy debates on the right
An impressive examination of the conjoined fates of Iraq and the United States
Steve Coll’s title alludes to Homer, and his subject matter has the arc of Greek tragedy
An unvarnished insight into the mind of Sonny Rollins
Even if jazz has developed stylistically in ways the jazz saxophonist might not have foreseen, its founding attitudes are enduring
A look into Billie Holiday’s final year
Paul Alexander is on a mission to correct what he sees as misrepresentations of the singer’s life and personality
Who’s afraid of Judith Butler?
The gender theorist’s first mainstream publication is unconvincing
Thursday
Who’s really behind the Biden administration’s foreign policy?
Alexander Ward’s carefully researched new account argues Biden is POTUS in name only
Coleman Hughes’s case for a colorblind future
The End of Race Politics expands on the arguments the writer has made for several years
War hero, bon viveur, Japanese spy: Frederick Rutland wore many masks
Beverly Hills Spy is the story of the espionage war with Japan, and the damaging rivalry between intelligence services that prevented them from working together
The frustrating rise of celebrities ‘writing’ children’s books
When you give a child a book by a celebrity, you are feeding their minds with advertising
The wit and wisdom of Margaret Cavendish
As a portrait of the thrilling, rackety milieu of the seventeenth-century literary world, Francesca Peacock’s Pure Wit is truly delightful
Edward Zwick on his hits — and his misses
Hits, Flops and Other Illusions is a fascinating book, both for what it includes and what it either omits or deals with in parentheses