The New Republic

Against the Day By Thomas Pynchon  (Penguin Press, 1,085 pp., $35)  Click here to purchase the book. READ MORE >>

"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me," Jack Nicholson intones at the beginning of The Departed. "No one gives it to you. You have to take it." In theory, he's talking about the rise of the Irish in America generally and Boston in particular; in practice, he's talking about himself, offering up a "My Way"-like tribute to his own success. READ MORE >>

THOMAS HARDY  By Claire Tomalin (Penguin Press, 486 pp., $35) READ MORE >>

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Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East  By Ali M. Ansari (Basic Books, 280 pp., $26) Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic By Ray Takeyh (Times Books, 260 pp., $25) Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions By Shahram Chubin (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 223 pp., $12.95) READ MORE >>

Overblown: How Politicians And The Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, And Why We Believe Them By John Mueller (Free Press, 259 pp., $25) What's Wrong With Terrorism? By Robert E. Goodin (Polity, 246 pp., $59.95) READ MORE >>

It's been a nice couple of years for the rehabilitation of pop-cinematic icons. Last summer, Christopher Nolan rescued Batman from the gothic campiness of the Tim Burton-Michael Keaton collaborations, not to mention the outright inanity of the Joel Schumacher sequels. Just weeks ago, the custodians of James Bond replaced their gadgeted gigolo with a sparer, meaner 007 in Casino Royale. READ MORE >>

<?xml:namespace prefix = dsl /> A few minutes after 4 p.m., Jack Bauer is summoned from his office at the Los Angeles branch of the Counter Terrorism Unit to investigate the murder of a curator at the Getty Museum. The man's body has been horribly deformed by contamination with an unknown virus, but before dying he was able to use one of his open pustules to paint a series of coded phrases on the museum floor. READ MORE >>

Tom Cruise loves women. We know this because over the last year and a half he's aggressively affirmed it in both the general sense ("They smell good. They look pretty. I love women. I do.") and the specific ("I'm in love! I'm in love! I can't be cool! I can't be laid back!"). We know it because when he made the latter comments, about new squeeze Katie Holmes, he emphasized his sincerity by treating Oprah's studio furniture like a ten-year-old's bed at a sleepover party. And we know it because he made Mission: Impossible III. READ MORE >>

Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where The Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We The People Can Correct It) By Sanford Levinson (Oxford University Press, 233 pp., $28) READ MORE >>