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Books

This photograph taken on Saturday, May 11, 2103, in Portland, Maine, shows the cover of former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe's new book, which is being released Tuesday. Snowe's book is a call to action to end what she calls excessive partisanship in Congress.  (AP Photo/Clarke Canfield)

Ex-Sen. Snowe Presses for Bipartisanship

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Portland, Maine — U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe describes a scene out of a Rockwell painting: With Washington crippled by a blizzard, President Obama worked the week before Christmas with a fire roaring in the fireplace in the Oval Office. Outside the window, his daughters played in the snow with their dog. Inside, Snowe writes in a new book, she delivered sad news to the president, whom she described as gracious. The Maine Republican couldn’t support Obama’s health care overhaul because her ideas, solicited in more than a dozen calls and eight face-to-face meetings, were left out of the final bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid …

Rocker-Poet Patti Smith Introduces World to Forgotten Favorite Novel

Sunday, May 19, 2013

The Slate Book Review presents Patti Smith’s introduction to Astragal , the 1965 novel by Albertine Sarrazin, which is being reprinted this month by New Directions. New York — Perhaps it is wrong to speak of oneself while writing of another, but I truly wonder if I would have become as I am …

Gross National Product

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Whether you feast on truffles or Cheetos, the end result is the same. Defecation is the great leveler. There’s nothing more democratic or unpretentious than what happens in the confines of our commodes — as the children’s book reassures us, everybody poops. While we increasingly obsess over what we put in our mouth, …

Poet Louise Glück’s  Genuinely Simple Speech

Friday, March 15, 2013

“Poems 1962-2012” by Louise Glück; Farrar, Straus and Giroux (656 pages, $40) My mixed feelings about Louise Glück’s poetry may, in some eyes, make me unsuited to write a useful review of this book. It’s a very important …

Was ‘Typhoid Mary’ a Scapegoat?

Friday, March 15, 2013

If anybody was in dire need of a good PR rep, it was Mary Mallon. She was an Irish immigrant who worked as a cook for affluent New York families in the early 1900s and the first person identified in America as an “asymptomatic” typhoid carrier. After Mallon …

Love Bytes: Merging Technology and Dating

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Dan Slater boasts a relatively rare — for now — perspective on computer dating. Without it, he wouldn’t exist. Slater’s parents met through Contact Inc., a matchmaking service that debuted in 1965 and went defunct soon after — though not before the two college students paid $4 each …

Readers, Artists, Collectors Gather at Eclectic L.A. Store

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Los Angeles — The staircase is narrow and creaky, with a bookshelf made from a 100-year-old harp case teetering on the precipice of collapse at the top of the landing. Overflowing with open books, pages wildly askew and …

Doggone Good Stories About Man’s Best Friend

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Author Mindy Friddle describes dogs as “the ultimate yes men.” Padgett Powell agrees: “A dog is the only friend you can have in life,” he writes, “who will go with you wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go, without question and without putting on his …

In Praise of Family Travel

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Charlotte, N.C. — Keith Bellows, 61, has gone more miles than most of us. The editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine was born in Africa — Leopoldville, in what was then Belgian Congo — partly raised in Canada …

A Portrait of an Ever-Changing London

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Craig Taylor, 36, is a Canadian-born writer who has lived in London since 2000. He is the author of Londoners — now out in paperback. It’s a collection of 80-some first-person essays that collectively form a portrait of …

Sydney Lea Recalls the Lessons of the North Country

Friday, March 1, 2013

That remote part of Maine “more east than north of Bangor” where Newbury, Vt., poet Sydney Lea spent time as a young man was populated by a rare breed of stouthearted men and women who made a hardscrabble …

Jodi Picoult Writes of Holocaust Burdens

Friday, March 1, 2013

“The Storyteller” by Jodi Picoult; Emily Bestler Books/Atria ($28.99) Sage Singer, the protagonist of Etna novelist Jodi Picoult’s ambitious 20th book, The Storyteller, is a physically and emotionally scarred young woman working as a baker in a small New Hampshire town. She avoids human contact, interacting only with …

Clive Davis Writes About Success and Collaborators, but Not Much About the Record Business

Friday, March 1, 2013

“The Soundtrack of My Life,” by Clive Davis with Anthony DeCurtis, Simon & Schuster (608 pages, $30) He may be one of the most influential music executives in the world, but Clive Davis was never a music geek. He didn’t like rock ‘n’ roll as a teen, doesn’t …