Observers, Bystanders, and Hangers On: Ten Novels with Unlikely Narrators
Many—maybe even most—of my favorite books are novels narrated by an observer who does not consider themselves the main actor in the story. Think Nick Carraway,...
The Fog of Ambition
“Almost great” is George Packer’s measured judgment on the life and character of the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who was trying to broker an end to...
Book Riot’s Deals of the Day for May 16th, 2019
Sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of Exhalation by Ted Chiang These deals were active as of this writing, but may expire soon, so get them...
Truth, Beauty, and Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks found it impossible to work in the abstract; only when he went to work in a hospital as a neurologist, interacting with patients, did...
Whose Raj?
To the Editors: Max Hastings’s “Staying On” is an essay blighted by prejudice and redolent of the stuffiest traditions of British self-regard. Source : Whose Raj?
Shelley’s Anti-Boney Fides
To the Editors: In his excellent piece on Napoleon, Ferdinand Mount asks why “half the intelligentsia of Europe,” including Percy Bysshe Shelley, “were passionate Napoleonists.” Shelley,...
Watt Nonsense
To the Editors: Not to niggle, but Bill McKibben cites one of the mistakes in history that becomes history itself, by repetition: “Vaclav Smil has pointed...
Voltaire’s Tears
To the Editors: Readers of Anthony Appiah’s instructive, finely reasoned essay “Dialectics of Enlightenment” would have had a more balanced view of Voltaire’s attitude on race...
The Pirates of Palestine?
To the Editors: G.W. Bowersock states that “an old though widespread idea that sea peoples invaded the coast [of Palestine] from the west no longer has...
Alison Kinney Encourages You to Write at the Grocery Store
In our monthly series Can Writing Be Taught? we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This time,...
