New & Noteworthy
What to read this month
Book Review
The Victorian Achievement
A usually sophisticated writer indulges in simple-minded animus against Victorian England—which deserves better
New & Noteworthy
What to read this month
Going to Extremes
Richard Powers is getting bigger and more ponderous. Nicholson Baker is getting smaller and more evanescent. Decision: Baker
The Wartime Toll on Germany
W. G. Sebald wrote of the pain of belonging to a nation that, in Thomas Mann's words, “cannot show its face”
The Wifely Duty
Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy
The Sage of Baltimore
Reading the prose of H. L. Mencken is one of the great joys that literacy bestows on the sentient
Coming of Age on Long Island
Child of My Heart represents a radical—if characteristically quiet— departure in Alice McDermott's fiction