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The perils of positive thinking
At a low point of her life, Barbara Ehrenreich came face to face with positive thinking and did not like what she saw. The author of “Nickel and Dimed’’ and “Bait and Switch’’ discovered that at least as far as her ...
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Books
Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed
Parents get help reading to deaf children
HELPING KIDS TO READ: One Saturday morning a month, families gather at Northern Essex Community College in Lawrence for workshops in which parents learn to read storybooks in American Sign Language to their deaf and hearing-impaired children.
...
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Books
200 years of pages turned
Phillips Academy instructor Thomas Hodgson often needs access to books quickly when preparing for class or determining what his students should read.
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Books
Heartfelt stories from Jane Goodall
Caring about the environment these days can be a depressing endeavor, what with polar bears drowning for lack of habitat, hormones and medications turning up in drinking supplies, a Texas-size trash vortex whirling around the Pacific, and - but ...
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Books
Jane Austen
Portrait of a jazz man
Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout’s “Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong’’ isn’t the first biography of Satchmo. But Teachout, who will give a lecture on Armstrong, did have the advantage of using previously ...
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Books
Jazz
The Wall
Kelley Armstrong
Powell’s dark follow-up to ‘Julie & Julia’ certainly isn’t Child’s play
NEW YORK - Julie Powell’s new book is not for the squeamish, in more ways than one.
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Books
Lincoln Child
Corporate thriller tangles ambitions, secrets, and war
In Joseph Finder’s best-selling corporate thrillers, the good guys and bad guys are more likely to battle it out with BlackBerrys than with guns, more likely to pilfer secrets from a senior manager’s office safe than engage in reckless car ...
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Books
Secrets
Exploring fanaticism, religious and secular
Today, according to Peter Berger, the eminent Boston University sociologist, and Anton Zijderveld, his Dutch colleague, “There’s a truly ecumenical community of fanatics of every persuasion, religious and secular.’’
...
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Books
The common good
The men are from all walks of life - including a former Sing Sing inmate, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and an NFL Hall of Famer - but they have at least one thing in common. Each wrote an essay about defining challenges in their lives for the ...
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Books
Pulitzer Prize
Dark love story multiplied by two
Lovers of Audrey Niffenegger’s “The Time Traveler’s Wife’’ may be surprised by her new novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry.’’ Set near and within London’s Highgate cemetery, this book is a dark love story ...
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Books
Love Story
Audrey Niffenegger
The Time Traveler's Wife
Unless
Two new reasons to be thankful
Florence Parry Heide’s “Princess Hyacinth’’ might have been a pale imitation of George MacDonald’s 19th-century classic tale, “The Light Princess.’’ In both, the young royal heroine floats - she ...
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Books
A mosaic of Chinese immigrant life
After novels such as “Waiting,’’ set in modern China, and “War Trash,’’ which depicted Chinese POWs during the Korean War, Ha Jin returns to short fiction with a volume of 12 stories that gracefully convey the often ...
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Books
A celebrated case of ‘word rage’
I do not like the word “pants.’’ As for its diminutive form, a word that I have never uttered or written, I simply cannot bear it. Is this loony? I’d say not; it’s just that words, far from being simple signs for some ...
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Books
The Case
Rage
Bookings
TODAY: Aaron Santos discusses “How Many Licks?,” at 6:30 p.m., Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge. MONDAY : Wade Rathke discusses “Citizen Wealth,” at 7 p.m., Harvard Square Coop.
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Books
First in peace
Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, has long been counted among the most fascinating, transformative, and tragic presidents in American history. Though he successfully pushed through significant domestic reforms, it is ...
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Books
Mazur’s passion
Michael Mazur was a painter and printmaker whose life was entwined with the literary world.
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Books
Secret Santa: The science behind the myth
Forget what you know about Santa Claus. He is not fat or jolly and he lives in Brooklyn, not the Arctic. In “T he Truth About Santa: Wormholes, Robots, and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve’’ (Bloomsbury), Gregory Mone explains ...
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Books
Transcending the familiar saga of addiction, recovery
Michelle Huneven’s third novel, “Blame,’’ is a story of addiction and recovery. In fact, Huneven’s previous two books also involve wrenching battles with alcohol. “Round Rock’’ is set at a drying-out ...
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Books
My so-called life
Once upon a time, before the Age of Oprah, writers who had lived through something terrible would turn their experiences into fiction.
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Books
Short Takes
EVENING'S EMPIRE: The Story of My Father's Murder By Zachary Lazar Little, Brown, 240 pp., $24.99
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Books
Why we do the things we do
All of us have asked ourselves: “Why do other people often make such odd decisions?’’ The more honest among us go on to inquire: “Why do I often make such odd decisions?’’ Freud was once thought to have some ...
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Books
Darkness at noon
In her mastery of the short story Alice Munro fashions a 24-hour day. There are nighttimes in her work, but the daylight lasts longer and, though struggling, it struggles harder.
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Books
Alice Munro
Scantastic
Arlington artist and filmmaker Rufus Butler Seder, 56, brings magic to the masses with his Lifetiles murals and Waddle!, his newest (and already best-selling) Scanimation book.
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Books
Memoir shares lessons of life with Asperger’s
As a child, Tim Page was an odd duck. He could recite at will every school-bus route in his Connecticut town. Tormented at recess, he stayed inside and blithely memorized huge chunks of the 1961 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. He knew more ...
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Books
World Book
A shortsighted memoir from Palin
Sarah the victim. After she experienced a meteoric rise to the heights of American politics, one might have expected Sarah Palin to produce an optimistic memoir that was enjoyable to read and somewhat forward looking.
...
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Books
Looking inward
The novelist Michael Chabon’s newest book is a lyrical collection of essays, “Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.’’ He has poignant and sometimes hilarious riffs on everything from ...
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Books
Michael Chabon
Top music book
‘They both knew that they would be best friends for a long, long time. Not that they talked about it; it was just there.’’ This is one of many things that Clarence Clemons writes about Bruce Springsteen in his highly entertaining new ...
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Books
Books
“Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind the Song,’’ Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Jo-Ann Geffen Funny, poignant, and insightful essays written by the songwriters of some of pop music’s biggest hits. The best - ...
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Books
A feast of facts in Baker’s ‘Thankgiving’
Thanksgiving came late in 1939 when the traditional fourth Thursday fell on Nov. 30 - a date of much concern to retailers facing barely three weeks until Christmas.
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Books
‘Wrong Mother’ strays from engrossing to incredible
Sophie Hannah has a lot going for her as a mystery writer. She’s breezy; she’s two steps ahead of the reader (this reader, anyway); and she’s not afraid to take on unsettling subject matter. But the longer this tale of a mother in ...
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Books
Square meals
A self-described “quirky individualist,’’ Mo Lotman has done all sorts of things: writing, acting, music, even comedy. This makes the Somerville resident an ideal chronicler of Harvard Square, a very quirky place defined by all sorts ...
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Books
History, epic intrigue in ancient Rome
Most people have heard about Cleopatra and Marc Antony: their epic love story, their heroics in battle, their dramatic deaths. But until now, little has been known about the equally dramatic lives of their children, who were left to the mercy of their ...
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Books
Michelle Moran
Salute to ACT UP
Banners screamed from the dingy walls of subway cars. Stickers shrieked from moving taxicabs: “Silence = Death.’’
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Books
Silence
An indictment against federal prosecutors
Boston lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate began outlining what became the book “Three Felonies a Day’’ 19 years ago, when he could no longer contain his anger at what he viewed as federal prosecutors abusing their power. Now that the book ...
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Books
Art that’s more than kids’ play
“Children’s Book of Art’’ (DK) isn’t just for kids. Lushly illustrated with hundreds of art works, this beautifully designed book has the depth and variety to engage art lovers of any age. Find out about the life and work ...
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Books
Solid attributes but not quite characters
For a writer, creating a character is more mysterious than creating a set of attributes, however complex or clever. Even the most lifelike doll’s costume doesn’t bring the doll to life. It wasn’t enough for the God of Genesis to ...
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Books
A new take on a standard
Do we need another gargantuan book that purports to retell the history of jazz? The aficionado’s bookcase is crammed with such texts, which come and quickly go. But the latest one, by the highly respected and talented jazz scribes Gary Giddins ...
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Books
Short Takes
THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S DILEMMA: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park By Jack Lynch Walker, 336 pp., $26
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Books
Evolution
Fathers and sons
In both the conception and execution of her stunning new novel, “A Friend of the Family,’’ Lauren Grodstein has channeled Edgar Allan Poe and his glowing review of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales.’’
...
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Twice
Bookings
TODAY: Joe Kahn (“Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy”) speaks at 10:30 a.m., Jewish Community Center, North Shore, 4 Community Road, Marblehead; for tickets ($18) and information, visit jccns.org/jewishbookmonth87.html . . . Ian ...
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Books
The Fall
The Road
Up an ugly river
The Connecticut River starts as a trickle up in northern New Hampshire. For 410 miles, it wanders through the heart of New England before emptying into Long Island Sound.
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Books
Island
Whodunits with depth
Readers who relish another opportunity to spend time with Kinsey Milhone, that tough cookie who cuts her hair with nail scissors and cleans up swell on those rare occasions when she unrolls her little black dress, will be pleased with Sue ...
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Books
CEO of Adams Inc.
On the Fourth of July 1956, trustees of the Adams Manuscript Trust gave the vast collection of family papers to the American people. At once, the Massachusetts Historical Society and Harvard University Press set out to microfilm and publish the ...
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Books
The Manuscript
From a man’s mind come a girl’s thoughts
It’s a little disconcerting, maybe even a little creepy, when a grown man pretends to get inside the head of a young girl. But such is the imaginative fantasy that literature can afford, and in “Mathilda Savitch,’’ ...
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Books
Following the trail of ‘Craigslist killer’
Last April, a Las Vegas prostitute who had flown to Boston was robbed at gunpoint in her Copley Square hotel room. She had placed an ad on Craigslist seeking Boston clients, and a young man had responded. Four days later, on April 13, Julissa Brisman, ...
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Books
The Four
Palin leads her own charge into the reality spotlight
This week’s Sarah Palin TV tour has been like “Jon & Kate & Sarah & Todd & Bristol & Levi Plus Kids.’’ A 2012 presidential candidacy may not be on Palin’s “radar screen right now,’’ ...
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Books
Kate DiCamillo
Sarah Waters
Barbara Walters
Shining new light on Opus Dei’s mission
Opus Dei means “work of God’’ in Latin. At the Montrose School in Medfield, it means educating girls to be leaders with “faith, character, and vision,’’ said the independent Catholic institution’s head, Karen ...
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Books
The Shining
Nitze, Kennan, and the Cold War
For many Americans, the Cold War is a distant memory, along with the enmity between the United States and Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear annihilation that characterized the period. While the dangerous world of today is quite different on many ...
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