Michael Sims
Content by Michael Sims
-
Richard Schweid's growing number of fans will be delighted by his new book Consider the Eel.
Read more »
-
Anne Perry's new Victorian murder mystery, Half Moon Street, begins in classic style, with the finding of a body.
Read more »
-
Each generation creates new illustrations of our classics, just as every era re-translates the foreign masterpieces. Apparently, we require our own idiom.
Read more »
-
"I was always writing something down," Peter Matthiessen remembers of his childhood. His voice, on the phone from his home in Sagaponack, New York, is relaxed and humorous.
Read more »
-
Oh, pity the prodigy, Farkle McBride! With these words, John Lithgow begins his first children's book, The Remarkable Farkle McBride.
Read more »
-
Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code did not single-handedly ignite a resurgence of interest in Leonardo Da Vinci, but it certainly fanned the flames of one already in progress.
Read more »
-
Younger readers or older fans of picture books will be unfamiliar with the name of Graeme Base.
Read more »
-
It's a jungle out there. Sometimes we forget that we are only one of countless species flying, swimming, tunneling and scurrying on the third rock from the sun.
Read more »
-
The Irish novelist John Banville has published more than a dozen books and won a number of prizes.
Read more »
-
Arriving on American shores this month, escorted by ecstatic reviews, is Fire Bringer, an epic animal fantasy in the tradition of Watership Down.
Read more »
-
Why should adults be the only ones with beach books to entertain them when they aren't cavorting in the surf? This summer the kids, too, have plenty of books to choose from.
Read more »
-
With so many competitors out there, an aspiring novelist needs a strong talent or an original slant to rise above the hoard. Mark Z. Danielewski seems to have both.
Read more »
-
Richard Schweid's new book, Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile: On the Road in Cuba appears to be a history of transportation in modern Cuba, but it turns out to be much more.
Read more »
-
After four decades of teaching, Edward O. Wilson retired from Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology last year. Fortunately, he has not retired from writing.
Read more »
-
Whatever images the word "mummy" may inspire in you, it won't hint at the variety in Bob Brier's wonderful Encyclopedia of Mummies.
Read more »
-
"The religion of the future, Albert Einstein once wrote, "will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. . . .
Read more »
-
Our urge to collect is as natural as other animals' urge to hoard. The big difference is that most of us, unlike squirrels, don't eat our collections.
Read more »
-
"This wasn't what I meant to write at all," Bobbie Ann Mason says of her new memoir, Clear Springs. She laughs. "But that's often true of a work.
Read more »
-
New technology brings many changes, both beneficial and harmful. Not least among the improvements is an ever-more-detailed look at the wonders formerly hidden from our limited animal senses.
Read more »
-
Books are so educational.
Read more »
-
The New England flowering of philosophers, novelists and poets in the early 19th century produced a literary crop that is still influencing our writing and thinking today.
Read more »
-
Chet Raymo is simply the best literary naturalist writing today, producing elegantly written, insightful books that open from a seemingly modest premise into a dizzying (and sometimes humbling) view
Read more »
-
Teachers of composition advise their students to write about what they know. It is best not to speculate just how much this advice applies to the life and, ahem, "work" of Mary K. Witte.
Read more »
-
On the telephone from her home on the coast of South Carolina, Josephine Humphreys talks about her new book in a soft, thoughtful voice.
Read more »
-
By now every literate American knows who Stephen E. Ambrose is.
Read more »
-
Greatest Irish Americans of the 20th Century, edited by Patricia Harty, is a terrific overview of the Irish - American experience.
Read more »
-
Mars has haunted the human imagination for millennia.
Read more »
-
If you're a Sherlock Holmes devotee, you will be delighted to learn that there is a new two-volume annotated collection of the Victorian detective stories.
Read more »
-
Robert Sullivan is a naturalist renowned for two previous books, The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, both of which received many accolades.
Read more »
-
"The book you are holding in your hand is extremely dangerous," begins the jacket copy for Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography.
Read more »
-
<B>Man or machine? It's a mystery</B> You may have run across the topic of Tom Standage's new book.
Read more »
-
To mystery readers, Marcia Muller genuinely needs no introduction, so we'll keep it short.
Read more »
-
Why do we need another bird guide? Isn't there one sticking out of the back pocket of every binoculars-owner in the world?
Read more »
-
<B>One woman's pursuit of justice</B> Clea Koff inherited a passion for justice.
Read more »
-
If you lack the stamina to slog through another 600-page fact-fest but retain a taste for biography and admire good writing, Penguin Books is publishing the ideal series for you.
Read more »
-
Despite television and the Internet, some books refuse to become extinct. Sure, there's plenty of junk out there, but fine new books and reprints of classics also flourish.
Read more »
-
Despite television and the Internet, some books refuse to become extinct. Sure, there's plenty of junk out there, but fine new books and reprints of classics also flourish.
Read more »
-
Despite television and the Internet, some books refuse to become extinct. Sure, there's plenty of junk out there, but fine new books and reprints of classics also flourish.
Read more »
-
Surely everyone knows who John James Audubon is innovative painter, Frenchman turned American, pioneer explorer, doting but often absent husband.
Read more »
-
Edward O. Wilson is firmly established as one of the most important scientific minds of our time.
Read more »
-
"Central Park was my Sheherazade," Marie Winn writes in Red-Tails in Love: Mysteries of Urban Wildlife.
Read more »
-
Between 1981 and 1993, John McPhee published four books describing how the world came to be shaped the way it is Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling Californ
Read more »
-
There is a conspiracy afoot.
Read more »
-
The most specialized volume in our roundup is also the most beautiful.
Read more »
-
Turn to The Handy Space Answer Book, by Phillis Engelbert and Diane L. Dupuis. It's a sequel to similar volumes on weather and science.
Read more »
-
In 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the Universe, William A. Gutsch ranges, well, throughout the universe. Why 1001?
Read more »
-
Much of the fuel for conspiracy theorists comes from the U.
Read more »
-
A manifesto opens John R. Stilgoe's new book, Outside Lies Magic. Thoreau would have been proud of it: "Get out now.
Read more »
-
In his new book, Summer at Little Lava, Charles Fergus follows Thoreau's advice and gives a clear account of himself: I had come to Little Lava for my own reasons, my own rewards: solitude, birds
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad.
Read more »
-
It all began with an off-hand remark, Silvio Bedini writes about the genesis of his new book, The Pope's Elephant.
Read more »
-
Intimate and accurate detail . . .
Read more »
-
Intimate and accurate detail . . .
Read more »
-
Intimate and accurate detail . . .
Read more »
-
All my life I have hesitated about writing another Oz book, Martin Gardner says in his introduction to Visitors from Oz.
Read more »
-
Tis the season to give the quirkiest and most fascinating Christmas book ever The Physics of Christmas by the English science writer Roger Highfield.
Read more »
-
Seeing science Dorling Kindersley has added yet another to their seemingly endless procession of beautiful science books.
Read more »
-
Give a case of Nancy Drew this season You may remember Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman from their charming bestseller Growing Up with Dick and Jane, or from their oddball gem I'm So Happy.
Read more »
-
The best of damn near everything Sometimes it's nice to have someone else do the work for you. You can't read everything.
Read more »
-
The best of damn near everything Sometimes it's nice to have someone else do the work for you. You can't read everything.
Read more »
-
It's a wild world In case you need to be reminded that the third rock from the sun is a strange and wonderful world, turn to the Simon ∧ Schuster Encyclopedia of Animals: A Visual Who's Who of
Read more »
-
Usually condensed books are an unnatural act. Only when pruned by the author do they escape disfiguring.
Read more »
-
Many successful people downplay their native gifts and emphasize their willpower, and Thomas Alva Edison was no exception.
Read more »
-
If you have not yet read Jorge Luis Borges, you can find an absolute feast of his writings in the long-awaited Collected Fictions.
Read more »
-
A fly-by-night kind of guy Frequently American heroes take the form of vigilantes outside the legal system. Batman certainly fits the mold.
Read more »
-
All dolled up From her origin as the near-clone of a German sex toy for men to her position as the reigning queen of dolls, Barbie has long been the world's favorite foot-tall cu
Read more »
-
Syms Covington was 15 years old when he joined the crew of H.M.
Read more »
-
As a child, long before he actually visited New Guinea, Tim Flannery fell in love with its exotic mystique.
Read more »
-
Because sequels and adaptations infest publishing as they do movie-making, please note that The Illustrated Longitude is neither.
Read more »
-
We need Annie Dillard. She thinks thoughts and makes connections that you won't find in any other writer.
Read more »
-
Ballantine's ongoing Library of Contemporary Thought is a curious series, embracing such unlikely books as Jimmy Carter's thoughts on aging, a study of Tiger Woods, and an upcoming volume by Don Im
Read more »
-
Recent surveys indicate that many urban children have no idea that milk comes from cows or that eggs come from chickens, much less any sense of the greater cycles of nature.
Read more »
-
YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Lenin grads Lenin's Embalmers, by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, is the story of the eccentric crew who were handed the scientifically and politically volatile assig
Read more »
-
The Irish novelist Soinbhe Lally is well-known in her own land, but A Hive for the Honeybee is her first book to be published in the United States. Let us hope it is not her last.
Read more »
-
Animation acclamation This second edition of The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, by Jeff Lenburg, contains over 40 percent new material among its more than 2,200 entries.
Read more »
-
The poetry and passion of science
Read more »
-
This new picture book may seem oddly familiar. Alfred A. Knopf first published John Updike's A Child's Calendar in 1965, with illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert.
Read more »
-
At dusk, when he couldn't draw anymore, Max used to sing . . . . His songs were wordless. I'd snuggle into the cozy red easy chair and listen.
Read more »
-
Wined and dined Oxford University Press has just released greatly revised second editions of their already classic encyclopedias on wine and food.
Read more »
-
For pilgrims and seekers Over the centuries Christians have considered Rome almost as sacred as Jerusalem.
Read more »
-
For pilgrims and seekers Over the centuries Christians have considered Rome almost as sacred as Jerusalem.
Read more »
-
For pilgrims and seekers Over the centuries Christians have considered Rome almost as sacred as Jerusalem.
Read more »
-
For worldly ones Science writer James Trefil and the National Geographic Society have joined forces to create a gorgeous new book about the gorgeous old universe, Other Worlds: Images of the Cosmo
Read more »
-
For worldly ones Science writer James Trefil and the National Geographic Society have joined forces to create a gorgeous new book about the gorgeous old universe, Other Worlds: Images of the Cosmo
Read more »
-
Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.
Read more »
-
Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah.
Read more »
-
Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah.
Read more »
-
Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.
Read more »
-
If you haven't read the nonfiction works of Peter Matthiessen, or you merely yearn for a one-volume greatest hits album, a new book offers the ideal sampler buffet.
Read more »
-
Lincoln's legacy lives on Abraham Lincoln was born in February of 1809, in humble surroundings. When he was assassinated 56 years later, he was one of the most famous human beings on earth.
Read more »
-
Lincoln's legacy lives on Abraham Lincoln was born in February of 1809, in humble surroundings. When he was assassinated 56 years later, he was one of the most famous human beings on earth.
Read more »
-
Lincoln's legacy lives on Abraham Lincoln was born in February of 1809, in humble surroundings. When he was assassinated 56 years later, he was one of the most famous human beings on earth.
Read more »
-
Gertrude Ederle was born to swim. In 1914, at the age of seven, she first went into the water and a decade later she won three Olympic medals.
Read more »
-
YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Expletives deleted Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space.
Read more »
-
Shakespeare from stage to page Scholars think Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died on that day in 1616.
Read more »
-
Shakespeare from stage to page Scholars think Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died on that day in 1616.
Read more »
-
Houghton Mifflin's splendidly browsable new reference book, Women in Scripture, is so exhaustive even its sub- title is lengthy: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Ap
Read more »
-
Tony Hillerman, author of the popular and award-winning series of Leaphorn/Chee novels, has placed his taste on the line in The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century.
Read more »
-
The Sally of the title, a black Labrador retriever, is a real dog. As notes included with the book tell it, she was originally trained to be a Seeing Eye dog but didn't find her niche in that role.
Read more »
-
Pain as God's Megaphone, C. S. Lewis wrote, "is a terrible instrument." Frank T. Vertosick quotes this line as epigraph to his new book, Why We Hurt.
Read more »
-
One dark and stormy night, the lights go out and a little girl and her grandmother are left in the dark without a TV, VCR, or computer. The thoroughly modern girl is frantic.
Read more »
-
It is a new millennium in Gotham City, and even as businesses pull the skyscrapers ever higher, criminals drag the streets ever lower.
Read more »
-
Fans of Lynn Curlee's books will applaud this addition to the shelf that contains Rushmore, Ships of the Air, and Into the Ice.
Read more »
-
YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE There's no place like foam Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space.
Read more »
-
Mike Wright rounds up and rounds out the Wild West "I sometimes find myself," Mike Wright says over the phone from his home in Chicago, "writing for the ear instead of the eye." After a lifetime in
Read more »
-
The sun comes up over New York City, silhouetting the ambitious bridges, casting a golden glow on the familiar yet fabled towers of Baghdad-on-the-Hudson.
Read more »
-
Eye of the beholder Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space.
Read more »
-
A Modern Library chronicles the past The title of this review sounds like a manifesto for a good library.
Read more »
-
Ladies and gentleman, a man who needs no introduction for once this overused line is true. Practically everybody knows who Stephen King is, so we'll skip the biographical stuff.
Read more »
-
You are probably familiar with the Brothers Grimm story of the tailor whose cleverness outwits the obstacles placed before him by the king, who has promised half his kingdom and his daughter's hand
Read more »
-
Unwrapping the past Certainly not everything in the world is getting better and better, but illustrated books may well be.
Read more »
-
Unwrapping the past Certainly not everything in the world is getting better and better, but illustrated books may well be.
Read more »
-
do we never tire of this story of the triumph of affection over outward appearance? Of course, it's also a story of extortion, kidnapping and violence, but hey, nobody said fairy tales were pretty.
Read more »
-
It's possible that being buried alive is not something you worry about. You may allot more of your fear time to public speaking or flying or impotence.
Read more »
-
ifestyles of the dead Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
(good and bad) luck o' the IrishMany Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays.
Read more »
-
Irish in AmericaOn the same theme is Maureen Dezell's Irish America: Coming Into Clover, with the second subtitle "The Evolution of a People and a Culture." A staff writer for the Boston Glo
Read more »
-
The (good and bad) luck o' the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays.
Read more »
-
he (good and bad) luck o' the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays.
Read more »
-
The (good and bad) luck o' the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays.
Read more »
-
(good and bad) luck o' the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
dy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
Freddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
reddy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
dy the Pig makes it big "Let joy be unconfined!" cries Charles the rooster in the children's book Freddy the Detective. Fans of the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R.
Read more »
-
e's got plenty of nothing ÔBecause it's not there' might be reason enough to write a book about Nothing, John D.
Read more »
-
EF, the United Nations Children's Fund, has co-published, along with Phyllis Fogelman Books, a new picture book that nicely sets an optimistic tone for the new millennium.
Read more »
-
b>Jubela, Cristina Kessler addresses an unusually dark subject for a children's picture book. Her accomplishment is that she has made of this sad story a triumphant fable.
Read more »
-
The topic and approach of Fannie in the Kitchen is best described by its subtitle: The Whole Story from Soup to Nuts of How Fannie Farmer Invented Recipes with Precise Measurements.
Read more »
-
You never know what sort of story will inspire a creative imagination.
Read more »
-
The cover of this gorgeous, fat, new book for children boldly claims "with 1,000 recommended Web sites," and they aren't kidding.
Read more »
-
E OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Every man a Rembrandt Perhaps there are some mysteries we are not meant to understand.
Read more »
-
ne small book for man Adrian Berry likes to think ahead. The Englishman's 15 books include such titles as The Next 500 Years and even The Next Ten Thousand Years.
Read more »
-
creatures, in books both great and small It's a jungle out there.
Read more »
-
Has it really been half a century since James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced to the world their discovery of the structure of DNA?
Read more »
-
For a while, Amir Aczel's Fermat's Last Theorem seemed to be everywhere.
Read more »
-
British writer and illustrator Cressida Cowell is the creator of several picture books, including the memorable Hiccup, the Viking Who Was Seasick, the story of a little Viking who doesn't fee
Read more »
-
Issue:
Part of the fun of reading is being surprised, whether by an author you thought you knew or a story whose next step you thought you could predict.
Read more »
-
Many of us still remember when we first heard the dry, droll voice of David Sedaris on public radio. He was the only person in the early 1990s more amusing than George Bush.
Read more »
-
Sometimes it's nice to have someone else do the work for you. You can't read everything.
Read more »
-
In his new book, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, acclaimed novelist Jonathan Franzen looks back at his childhood and adolescence near Chicago in the 1960s and '70s.
Read more »
-
Batman in the Sixties is a history-minded volume. It is dedicated to Batman's creator, Bob Kane, who died last year, half a century after first sketching a bat-winged hero.
Read more »
-
For three reasons, fans of science are living in an exhilarating time.
Read more »
-
For three reasons, fans of science are living in an exhilarating time.
Read more »
-
For three reasons, fans of science are living in an exhilarating time.
Read more »
-
continues a recent trend of small, focused books that closely examine particular topics in history and present them in clear, well-written prose for non-specialists.
Read more »
-
Tom Robbins believes in truth in advertising.
Read more »
