In the annals of art theft, no case has matched―for sheer criminal panache―the heist at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder ―including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer― remained at large for years.…
On March 20, 1969, the day after she slipped a color-coded piece of paper into an on-campus mailbox designated for ride sharing requests, University of Michigan student Jane Mixer was murdered. Picked up by the man who had replied to her request for a lift back to her hometown, a man she did not know…
Here’s the thing: I can’t remember the last book that made me laugh so hard, so often. And I’m talking out loud, tear-producing laughter. The kind of laughter that prompts whoever is nearest to inquire in a suspect manner, Is it really that funny? A question that, due to residual laughter, can only be answered with…
The full title of Sobel’s latest is The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. What the book contains is what it says on the tin, mostly. I would add emphasis to one word in the subtitle: How. I would de-emphasize another: Ladies. Based on the title and publisher…
I know what you’re thinking, those of you with less than pleasant memories of Kafka (thanks to High School English class, right?), but here’s the thing: For all that this book is billed as a biography, Kafka is mostly just along for the ride. Which is to say: Have you ever focused your wanderlust on…
You’re on the hunt for a lighthearted or uplifting book to read while winter wanes; your eager eye has wandered here, to this title by National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson, but I must tell you: Symphony for the City of the Dead is neither lighthearted, nor uplifting. This book, after all, concerns the Soviet…
There was a bit of a line in Jennifer Senior’s New York Times review of The Man With the Golden Typewriter that drew my eye back to read it again, because, I suppose, I was trying to imagine what a giant stalk of catnip might look like, if it would be Jack-worthy giant or stop…
Who invented the flapper? Was it one of the equally infamous Fitzgerald’s? F. Scott so often gets the credit, whereas Zelda had her fingers on the pulse of what it was to be a flapper more intimately than her husband ever could. But, all right, if not one of the expat members of the Lost…
The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions of the Vietnam War – Dan Hampton The Hunter Killers‘ prologue reads a bit like a combined manufacturer’s manual for a plethora of fighter aircraft, radar equipment and surface-to-air missiles. This pages-long deluge…
There’s no lie in that subtitle: the birth of the comic book (the storytelling, the art, the characters, the industry, all those egos) is the axis on which Men of Tomorrow turns. The thing is, a whole, beaming-bright universe of American history glommed on for the ride. There be decades in these pages, long years that hosted war and prohibition and depression and hope that ebbed and flowed like the tide. And I loved every minute spent on delving into the details.
James Hookbridge has been cursed to an eternity of waging war against sharp-toothed boys in the Neverland. Wholly weary of it, he has but one desire left to him, and that is for Death to find and take him at His earliest convenience. For a permanent ceasefire; the game board cleared and put away; to…
We all have in mind a sense of fairy tale: that story type and what it’s composed of, along with favorite examples. Certain names no doubt spring immediately to mind: Grimm, Anderson, Disney. You’ll encounter those familiar stories, names, and more in Warner’s short history. In the prologue, Warner offers an at-a-glance definition of fairy…