The New Republic

Wodehouse: A Life By Robert McCrum (W.W. Norton, 530 pp., $27.95) READ MORE >>

The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us--and Why the Feeling Is Mutual By Richard Z. Chesnoff (Sentinel, 208 pp., $23.95) Click here to buy this book Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese By Denis Boyles (Encounter Books, 210 pp., $23.95) Click here to buy this book READ MORE >>

Looking up at the towering, massive, early twentieth-century skyscraper that is the Municipal Building, I saw the names of my beloved city carved in Roman letters in a continuous line in blocks of stone: NEW AMSTERDAM MDCXXVI / MANAHATTA / NEW YORK MDCLXIV. Manahatta--what a beautiful name, I thought, so much more lyrical than New Amsterdam or New York or our present-day Manhattan, a name so lyrical that Whitman had written a lovely ode to it: READ MORE >>

Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (And the Rest of Us Too) By Mona Charen (Sentinel, 269 pp., $25.95) Click here to buy this book READ MORE >>

The acclaimed "Aztec Empire" exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was going to close in just over a week so my husband and I met a friend uptown to see it. For me, the word "Aztec" immediately brings to mind two distinct impressions: elegant, "primitive," proto-modernist objects; and terrifying ritual human sacrifice, most notoriously, ripping the beating heart out of the chest of a still-living victim. READ MORE >>

Let patience have a new mettle of love When the legions of unlivable hours marshal And the long-rumored war between good and evil Seems loosed—no, between time and evil.  To look not too keenly, hear their battles not loudly. The war is an ancient one which hurls Time against time on to-morrow’s fields— Which consumes expectation, leaves to-day waiting.  READ MORE >>

Monumental Propaganda By Vladimir Voinovich Translated by Andrew Bromfield (Alfred A. Knopf, 365 pp., $25)  READ MORE >>

Nehru: A Political Life By Judith M. Brown (Yale University Press, 407 pp., $35)  Nehru: The Invention of India By Shashi Tharoor (Arcade, 282 pp., $24.95)  READ MORE >>

Monsieur N (Empire) The Woodsman (Newmarket)  When the stars fade, when the cosmos darkens, there will still be one spot of light on planet Earth. That light will be a film studio where they are shooting another picture about Napoleon. READ MORE >>

V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life By Jeremy Treglown (Random House, 334 pp., $25.95) READ MORE >>