The Secret of the Old Saw
Nancy Drew has two mommies
Book Review
He Found It at the Movies
What to read this month—and what not to
A Close Read
What makes good writing good
If Pigs Could Swim
Why our farm animals would be better off on the other side of the Atlantic
The Great Escape
A grudging salute to an absentee mom
Hobbes in the Himalayas
The situation in horrible, magical modern Kashmir—where East battles East in a war that fuses the psychopathic and the apocalyptic—defies political analysis. But Salman Rushdie's new novel captures it as nothing else can
New Fiction
Finds and flops
You Might as Well Live
Nick Hornby's characters could care less
A Close Read
What makes good writing good
A Breath of Dust
"I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying," T. S. Eliot said of The Waste Land. A new guide to the poem inadvertently suggests we should take him at his word