Books Archive

Peter Handke: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - "Terrible things are happening outside... poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school

Peter Mayle: My Twenty-Five Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now - Peter Mayle toiled for decades in advertising, beginning as a copywriter and finishing thirteen years later as a creative director ("I think I was also a vice president, but I

Peter Reich: A Book of Dreams - This is a cult favorite: a memoir by the son of Wilhelm Reich, the groundbreaking psychoanalyst whose theories brought him to the government’s attention and led to the destruction of

Peter Temple - Peter Temple died in 2018. His death was a loss to readers who like novels that seem to be about crime but are really about much more. And it was

Peter Temple: Identity Theory - Johannesburg, 2 PM on a weekday. Here is Niemand, no first name. He's working out. Inside. "Outdoors had become trouble, like being attacked by three men, one with a nail-studded

Peter Temple: The Broken Shore - Peter Temple is two of the best writers I know. He's the best novelist writing about crime in Australia and one of the best crime writers on the planet. And then he’s

Peter Temple: Truth - Laurie doesn’t see him, so Steve Villani is able to study his wife as she walks toward him. Jeans, black leather jacket, thinner, different haircut, a more confident stride. He hasn’t planned

Philip Roth: Goodbye, Columbus - Forget that "Goodbye, Columbus" won the 1960 National Book Award for fiction ... just read the beginning of the novella. The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to

Philip Roth: The Ghost Writer - The first paragraph of "The Ghost Writer," published in 1979, strikes me as close to perfection: It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago

Philip Roth: The Humbling - I read the new Philip Roth novel the other day --- it’s just 140 pages, with fewer words than usual per page, so you can knock it off in a

Philip Roth: The Plot Against America - GUEST BUTLER BARBARA FINKELSTEIN is the author of Summer Long-a-coming. Her pieces for Head Butler include In Defense of Long Books, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Battle Hymn of the

Philip Slater: The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture - Philip Slater? In 1970, he was the rising star of sociology, having published a landmark book, The Pursuit of Loneliness. He taught at Harvard, became chairman of the Sociology department

Philip Slater: The Pursuit of Loneliness - I was saddened to learn that I now must admire Philip Slater among the dead. The New York Times obituary suggests how many lives he crammed into his 86 years ---

Picture in the Sand: A Novel - Peter Blauner was a junior person when we both worked at New York Magazine in the 1980s. I didn’t know him. And I didn’t know him when his novel, “Slow

Pimp - Consider Yourself Warned: Many readers will find 'Pimp' shocking, even disgusting. Men will likely find it sexist; women almost certainly will. So why feature it? Because I couldn't put it down. Because

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization -

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes - A snail was mugged by two turtles. When the police asked him what happened, he said, “I don't know. It all happened so fast.” Tom Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Please Excuse My Daughter - “A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." That was Samuel

Please Look After Mom - GUEST BUTLER JILL SWITZER has been a member of the State Bar of California for 40 years and now is a full-time mediator. She writes a weekly column called

Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi - If you’re like me, you arrange your cookbooks by nationality. Convenient --- when you’re thinking of making chicken sautéed in vinegar, all of France awaits you. And revealing --- France used