A professor’s murky history
"Blame" By Michelle Huneven Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux $25, 304 pages To regard the cover image of "Blame" -- a broken wine glass -- as code for chick-lit...
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The history behind blogs
"Say Everything" By Scott Rosenberg Crown, $26, 391 pages Narcissistic exercises or egalitarian communication. Most books about blogs are manifestoes, written shapelessly (like plenty of blog posts), lacking nuance. This...
Patient, heal thyself
"Larry's Kidney" By Daniel Asa Rose William Morrow, $25.99, 320 pages The subtitle, "(Being the Story of) How I Found Myself in China With My Black Sheep Cousin and His...
Friendship and feminism
"Commencement" By J. Courtney Sullivan Knopf, $24.95, 324 pages It's as if the characters in Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep" -- well, the girls -- graduated and landed in the same freshman...
Difficult lessons in America
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man" By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Vintage, $15, 226 pages The recent arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge...
Standing above the others
"The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From on High" By Arianne Cohen, 6'3" Bloomsbury, $20, 243 pages Why are tall people wealthier and more successful than the more diminutive...
From war zones to soccer fields
"Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town" By Warren St. John Spiegel & Grau, $24.95, 307 pages How do boys from war-ravaged countries come together as a team and...
Field guide to the classics
"Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits" By Jack Murnighan Three Rivers Press, 374 pages, $13.95 He may be almost too...
Lessons in democracy
"Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution" By Richard R. Beeman Random House, $30, 514 pages The extent of presidential power may be in the news, but its...
An American tale told with urgency
"Follow Me" By Joanna Scott Little, Brown, 420 pages, $24.99 Joanna Scott, one of my favorite writers, returns to the past in this novel, the MacArthur Fellow's 10th work of...