Books

It is doubtful that 50-some years ago there was a terrific place to grow up gay, but Brooklyn sounds, from Steven Gaines's memoir, like a particularly challenging one.

Simon Perchik is a master craftsman at his unadorned best as he explores the underworld in these deeply rich, elemental verses.

It may be that no single person has done more to knock down the doors of censorship in art and literature in America than Barney Rosset.

OR Books, which this week came out with the hardcover of Barney Rosset’s autobiography, will celebrate the late and legendary publisher and East Hamptoner with a gathering at the Strand bookstore on Monday. That may be on Broadway in Manhattan, but at least one East Hampton author will be there, A.M. Homes, to be joined by other novelists: Dale Peck, Emily Gould, and Lev Grossman. 

Starting at 6:30 p.m., they will discuss “the impact Rosset had in reshaping American culture,” according to a release.

Mary Ellen Hannibal takes readers on an epic journey that traverses the terrain where the sciences and humanities meet and where hope issues from dialogue between the public and specialists.

Kurt Wenzel, our man in letters, picks the top 10 titles of the year past.

Reading Blanche Wiesen Cook’s concluding volume of her three-part biography of Eleanor Roosevelt in the weeks following the 2016 election, one is struck by the parallels between her life and that of another former first lady much in the news this year, Hillary Clinton.

David Nichtern, a meditation teacher, has written a remarkably useful and succinct handbook of Buddhist practice and psychological concepts.

Does Tom Wolfe know when he attacks mainline Christians as moo-cows that he will arouse a bit of miff?

Why and how does someone come to embrace a compulsive myth and commit totally to a humanitarian cause for achieving worldwide perpetual perfection?

The story of a daughter who's unlucky in love, her search for her deadbeat dad, and the solace he finds in a dollhouse.

If you think Jews as boxers sounds like a contradiction in terms, or a comical misprint, or perhaps a racist joke, you need to meet Max Baer and Barney Ross.

By Bruce Buschel

Keats observes the last World Series game of the year.

I'm grateful for novels that not only incorporate the World War I era, but bring it to life on an intimate scale: history writ small. That's what Helen Simonson has done masterfully in "The Summer Before the War."

James D. Zirin blames personal ideologies among the justices, identity politics, and rank partisanship for a compromised Supreme Court.

Readings with a Halloween theme, and an editor talks about the publishing business.

By Carol Sherman

Erica Abeel’s “Wild Girls” follows three friends who meet at Foxleigh — an amalgam of Barnard and Smith — as they negotiate the changing landscape of a woman’s place in America from the 1950s through the early 2000s.

Lawrence Goldstone has come down to earth. Following his 2014 book, “Birdmen,” a history of early aviation, he has now presented us with “Drive! Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age.”

Joe Dolce is not a stoner. The author of “Brave New Weed: Adventures Into the Uncharted World of Cannabis,” he makes a point of that, but also has no hesitance in “piercing the veil” and talking from a user’s as well as a researcher’s point of view about pot.

New children’s books explore a West African girl's dreams of a time she won't have to tote water from a far-off well, lessons in gratitude at school, the adventures of a destructive dog, and a Christmas tree that avoids the ax to live another day.

Janet Lee Berg's first novel involves a father in Nazi-occupied Holland who trades a painting by Rembrandt for his daughter’s safety and that of 25 other Jews.

A mother-son writing duo? Possible treacle alert. A teenager who started his own school? Back-patting danger. But this book? No need for alarm, it's thought-provoking, even moving.

A thriller is supposed to thrill and this one does, but not with the usual car chases or shootouts or otherworldly phenomena, instead with masterful plotting, tight prose, and assured psychological insight.

From Robert Caro's achievement award to "Ghost Hampton" readings

It’s that time again. The air is crisp, the leaves are turning, the kids are back in school. And readings have returned in earnest to the college.

A high tea north of the highway in Sagaponack will feature the poetry of the recently departed as read by other poets to benefit the Lustgarten Foundation.

Harry Hurt III will sign copies of his newly re-released "Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump" on Saturday in Sag Harbor.

Colson Whitehead is too smart a writer to make "The Underground Railroad" simply another litany of white atrocities and triumphant freedom; he finds a new way to tell the story.