Books Archive

Life isn’t everything: Mike Nichols, as remembered by 150 of his closest friends. - “Men are divided into two groups,” a friend of Mike Nichols says on the first page of this book. “There are guys who want to be Babe Ruth, and

Life’s Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can’t Take It Anymore -     Life's Little

Lift - SUPPORTING BUTLER: You can become a patron of this site, and automatically donate any amount you please — starting with $1 — each month. The service that enables this is

Lift - Hi. So much happened in my week off, all of it good, and intensely emotional. Like this: my daughter made the video for the abridged edition of “Black Beauty.” She’s

Lillian on Life - The most enjoyable novel I’ve read this year begins like this: “Whenever I wake up next to a man, before I’m fully awake, I think it’s Ted. Of course it

Lit: A Memoir - For a writer of memoirs, Mary Karr has had a charmed life. That is, a lot has happened, almost all of it colorful, much of it painful. And, in each

Little Caesars: How Wall Street & Big Business Conspired to Overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and Install a Fascist Dictator — and the Patriot Who Stopped Them - Rachel Maddow has a new book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, and a podcast that dissects historical efforts to bring Fascism to America. Along the way, she synopsizes the

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression - And we think we have it tough. Mildred Armstrong was born in 1922, on a farm near Garrison, Iowa. When she was five, her grandfather banished her father --- sent

Living Artfully: At Home with Marjorie Merriweather Post - Fifty Shades of Grey is the porn favorite for seventy million people. House porn is the guilty pleasure of many fewer. I’m in that group. I don’t look at coffee table books about

Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life And Times of Doc Pomus - He was short and stubby. He’d had polio at 9; he couldn’t walk without braces and crutches. To see this 16-year-old kid struggle to the stage of a Greenwich Village

Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously - Every fall, I watch the New York Marathon. Each fall, I think: I must work out more. Bill McKibben, the noted environmental writer, had this same feeling in 1998. He was then

Looking for the Summer -       Looking for the Summer Jim Brandenburg The last time I was in the Boundary Waters

Louise Glück: Reading her, you get the feeling that her struggle is your struggle, that she somehow knows how it is for you. - Louise Glück --- it’s pronounced “Glick”--- died. Large obit in The Times.  Big Butler review for her last book of poems. She won the Nobel Prize for Poetry. She was

Louise Glück: Winter Recipes from the Collective - The best book of short stories I read this year is Louise Glück’s book of poems, “Winter Recipes from the Collective.” 15 poems. 64 pages. And no “poetic” language ---

Love & Money - The Governor of South Carolina --- a married father of four who wasn’t shy about proclaiming his Christian faith and family values --- went AWOL to visit his mistress in

Love Everyone: The Transcendent Wisdom of Neem Karoli Baba Told Through the Stories of the Westerners Whose Lives He Transformed - Richard Alpert went to India, met Neem Karoli Baba and returned to America as Ram Dass, author of the mega-bestseller "Be Here Now." He wasn’t supposed to speak about his

Love in Mid Air - Elyse Bearden is flying back from a pottery show in Phoenix when fate seats her next to Gerry Kincaid. He’s an investment banker who climbs mountains on weekends. He’s married

Love of My Life - GUEST BUTLER RON FRIED is the author of two novels, as well as a collection of profiles of 20th century boxing trainers. More recently, he’s written a novel about the

Love You Forever - “A daughter is her father’s heart, walking away on feet.” Gospel truth. I live it every day. The Child you met in these pages a long, long time ago became The

Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond - Orson Welles? Or Michael Lindsay-Hogg? When I met Michael in l985, the possibility that he was the son of the genius who co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in “Citizen Kane” was