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Books

The Brains of the Family

In her gripping first novel, “A Most English Princess,” Clare McHugh has seized on the fact that Vicky, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, was surely the smartest and most capable of her siblings. Her claim to England’s throne, however, was dashed by her younger brother.

Jan 21, 2021
A Journey Inward

“Being Ram Das” is the memoir of the former Richard Alpert of Boston, whose remarkable journey took him from elite universities, high social status, and hallucinogenic drug use to points near and very far, including, in 1967, to the feet of a blanketed man in the Himalayas.

Jan 14, 2021
The Poet Who Knew Everyone

This collection of Tony Towle’s poems, itself a work of art, contains numerous photos, most black and white by Hans Namuth. Through this lens of a particular time and place in the 1960s, a world opens up, offering a glimpse at a specific historical moment.

Jan 7, 2021
The 10 Best Books of One Tough Year

Kurt Wenzel, novelist, book and theater critic, and the best-read man we know, picks ’em.

Dec 30, 2020
Literature’s Knight-Errant

John Steinbeck couldn’t stop writing. Couldn’t stop rushing out to right injustices. He was a loner who never seemed to be lonely, William Souder writes in “Mad at the World,” his new biography.

Dec 23, 2020
A Hunt for Holiday Books

Some are surprising; others, considering the times, probably predictable, but here, for your reading pleasure and inspiration, are some of the most popular books we on the East End are giving each other this holiday season.

Dec 17, 2020
Notes of a Stand-Up Comic

Organized chronologically over the past five decades, Jerry Seinfeld’s “Is This Anything?” is both a history of American habits and preoccupations and also an autobiographical record of the thoughts of an analytically minded American male as he progressed from his 20s to his 60s.

Dec 17, 2020
The Long Goodbye

“Inside Story” is utterly saturated with death. Paradoxically, it is also one of the liveliest and most entertaining books from Martin Amis since his 2000 memoir, “Experience.”

Dec 10, 2020
Book Markers 12.10.20

New from local authors: Former ad man Lyle Greenfield brings art world psychological suspense, 1980s-style, and Kay Tobler Liss takes on Montauk in the off-season, where a Native American woman fends off a land grab.

Dec 10, 2020
The Wages of the Present

The new Pushcart anthology of the best of the small presses is heavy on sincerity, light on cynicism; heavy on depth of feeling, light on cheap shots.

Dec 3, 2020
A Moveable Feast

“One Last Lunch,” Erica Heller’s colorful compendium of essays, gives a number of writers the chance to share a repast with their deceased friends, lovers, colleagues, occasional alter egos, and notably fathers, from Saul Bellow to John Cheever to, of course, Joseph Heller.

Nov 25, 2020
A Failure of Justice

In “On Account of Race,” Lawrence Goldstone traces Supreme Court decisions regarding voting rights from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to the present. It is a book that challenges your faith in the independence and fairness of the high court.

Nov 19, 2020