Old Columns

Earlier Bookmarks

2006 Columns

2005 Columns

2004 Columns

May 6, 2004: A Match Made in Hell: The Jewish Boy and the Polish Outlaw Who Defied the Nazis by Larry Stillman (University of Wisconsin Press)
April 22, 2004: The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind (Simon & Schuster)
April 8, 2004: The Forgotten Founders by Stewart L. Udall (Island Press)
March 25, 2004: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (Simon & Schuster)
March 25, 2004: Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
March 11, 2004: Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ball Park by Jim Bouton (Bulldog Publishing)
February 26, 2004: Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore (Warner Books)
February 12, 2004: Shameless Exploitation: In Pursuit of the Common Good by Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner (Doubleday)
February 5: The Last Man in Berlin by Gaylord Dold (Sourcebooks)
January 8:: The Hanged Man by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam's Sons)

2003 Columns

November 27, 2003: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken (Dutton)
November 27, 2003: Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky (Houghton Mifflin Company)
October 30, 2003: Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (The New Press)
October 16, 2003: American Massacre by Sally Denton (Alfred A. Knopf)
October 16, 2003: Seriously Funny by Gerald Nachman (Pantheon Books)
October 2, 2003: You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett (Random House)
September 4, 2003: The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam (Hyperion)
August 21, 2003: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (Doubleday)
July 24, 2003: The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston (Doubleday)
July 10, 2003: Moneyball: How to Win an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (Norton)
June 26, 2003: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Crown)
June 12, 2003: Artemis by Julian Stockwin (Scribner)
June 12, 2003: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking)
May 29, 2003: That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx (Scribner)
May 1, 2003: Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis by Deborah Hayden (Basic Books, 2003)
April 17, 2003: Blood on the Tongue by Stephen Booth (Scribners, 2002)
April 3, 2003: Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (ReganBooks)
March 6, 2003: Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman by Jane Kramer (Pantheon Books, 2002)
February 20, 2003: Defiant Courage by Astrid Karlsen Scott and Tore Haug (Nordic Spirit Productions, Inc.)
February 6, 2003: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)
January 23, 2003: An American Insurrection by William Doyle (Doubleday, 2001)
January 9, 2003: My Losing Season by Pat Conroy (Doubleday, 2002)

2002 Columns

December 6, 2002: Books for Holiday Giving (Selections from the Past Year)
November 21, 2002: The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)
November 7, 2002: Shakespeare for the Modern Reader by Henry I. Christ (Writer's Showcase, 2002)
October 24, 2002: Bitterroot by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster, 2002)
October 10, 2002: Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe by Gregory Gibson (Little, Brown and Company)
September 26, 2002: The Real Hero
- Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain by Robert Harvey (London: Constable, 2000)
- Lord Cochrane: Seaman, Radical, Liberator by Christopher Lloyd (Henry Holt and Company, 1947)
- Cochrane: Britannia's Last Sea-King by Donald Thomas (The Viking Press, 1978)
September 19, 2002: A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster, 1998)
August 29, 2002: The 13th Element by John Emsley (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
August 15, 2002: The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
August 1, 2002: Crescent and Star: Turkey between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
July 25, 2002: The Nelson Touch by Terry Coleman (Oxford University Press, 2002)
July 4, 2002: When I Was a Young Man by Robert Kerrey (Harcourt, Inc.)
June 20, 2002: Harm Done by Ruth Rendell (Doubleday, Canada, 2001)
June 6, 2002: Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (Random House, 2001)
May 23, 2002: Blinded by the Right by David Brock (Crown Publishers, 2002)
May 9, 2002: It's Been a Good Life by Isaac Asimov (Prometheus Books)
April 25, 2002: Lazy B by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day (Random House)
April 11, 2002: The End of the Civil War
- April 1865: The Month that Saved America by Jay Winik (HarperCollins, 2002)
- An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government by William C. Davis (Harcourt)
March 28, 2002: The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb by George Feifer (The Lyons Press)
March 14, 2002: Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002)
February 21, 2002: Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sachs (Alfred A. Knopf)
February 7, 2002: A Shortage of Engineers by Robert Grossbach (St. Martin's Press, 2001)
January 24, 2002: Border Crossing by Pat Barker (Farrar, Straus and Giraux)
January 3, 2002: Lake Wobegon Summer 1976 by Garrison Keillor (Viking, 2001)

2001 Columns

December 13, 2001: Books for Holiday Giving (My Favorites from the Past Year)
November 29, 2001: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (Random House, 2001)
November 15, 2001: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser (Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
November 8, 2001: Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank (Random House, 1999)
November 1, 2001: Carry Me Home: Birmingham Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
October 25, 2001: Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio, Raising the Standards of Popular Culture by Steve Allen (Prometheus Books, 2001)
October 18, 2001: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
October 11, 2001: Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, 2001)
October 4, 2001: Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis (Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
September 27, 2001: John Adams by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
September 20, 2001: The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
September 13, 2001: Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial by Richard J. Evans (Basic Books, 2001)
September 6, 2001: The Right Hand of Sleep by John Wray (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)
August 30, 2001: Two Books about Louise Brooks
- Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks (University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
- Louise Brooks: A Biography by Barry Paris (University of Minnesota Press, 1989)
August 23, 2001: I'd Hate Myself in the Morning: A Memoir by John Lardner, Jr. (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2000)
August 16, 2001: Empire Falls by Richard Russo (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)
August 9, 2001: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)
August 2, 2001: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001)
July 26, 2001: Four and Twenty Bluebeards by Loren Keller (self published, 1999)
July 19, 2001: Cassada by James Salter (Counterpoint, 2000)
July 12, 2001: At End of Day by George V. Higgins (Harcourt, 2000)
July 5, 2001: Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 by David M. Glantz (University Press of Kansas, 1999)
June 28, 2001: A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky (Scribner, 2001)
June 21, 2001: Surfing the Great Lakes: An Insider's Guide to Monster Waves along North America's Fresh Coast by P. L. Strazz (Big Lauter Tun Books)
June 7, 2001: The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
May 31, 2001: Two Crime Novels by Michael Dibdin
- Cosi Fan Tutti (Pantheon, 1996)
- A Long Finish (Pantheon, 1998)
May 24, 2001: Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)
May 17: Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Goldiner (Viking, 2001)
May 10: Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes (Viking, 2001)
May 3: The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind by Elkhonon Goldberg (NY: Oxford, 2001)
April 26: Eagle's Cry by David Nevin (Tom Doherty Associates, 2000)
April 19: McMurtry Rides Again -- and Again
- Boone's Lick (Simon & Schuster, 2000)
- Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
April 12: Lying with the Enemy by Tim Binding (Caroll & Graf, 1998)
April 5: Intensive Care: A Doctor's Journal by John F. Murray (University of California Press, 2000)
March 29: Uncle Petros & Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis (Bloomsbury)
March 22: Anchors Aweigh: (Two Books about the United States Navy)
- Delilah by Marcus Goodrich (Lyons Press, 2000, originally published in 1941)
- Sub-Chaser by Edward P. Stafford (Warner Books, 1988)
March 15: Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg (University of Utah Press, 1999)
March 8: The Pledge by Friedrich Duerrenmatt (Boulevard, 2000)
March 1: A Canadian Tragedy: JoAnn and Colin Thatcher: A Story of Love and Hate by Maggie Siddins (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1985)
February 22: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (Hyperion, 2000)
February 15: The Game of Life: College Sports and Academic Values by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen (Princeton University Press, 2001)
February 1: Wildwood Boys by James Carlos Blake (Avon, 2000)
January 25: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2000)
January 18: A History of Invention: From Stone Axes to Silicon Chips by Trevor Williams (Checkmark Books division of Facts-on-File, 1987, rev. 2000)
January 11: A Veritable Army of Grants
- Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822-1865 by Brooks D. Simpson (Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
- Grant: A Novel by Max Byrd (Bantam Books, 2000)
- Grant Speaks by Ev Ehrlich (Warner Books, 2000)
- That Fateful Lightning: A Novel of Ulysses S. Grant by Richard Parry (Ballentine Books, 2000)
January 4: The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan by Godfrey Hodgson (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000)

2000 Columns

December 28: Boggs: A Comedy of Values by Lawrence Weschler (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
December 21: Flutie by Doug Flutie with Perry Lefko (Warwick, 1997)
December 14: Books for Holiday Giving
December 7: Dream Catcher: A Memoir by Margaret A. Salinger (Washington Square Press, 2000)
November 30: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (Vintage, 1995)
November 23: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski (Scribner, 2000)
November 16: The Annotated Wizard of Oz: A Centennial Edition by L. Frank Baum, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn (W. W. Norton, 2000)
November 9: JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas with Don Davis (St. Martin's, 2000)
November 2: The Architecture of the Shakers by Julie Nicoletta (The Countrymn Press, 1995)
October 26: You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You by Molly Ivins (Random House, 1998)
October 19: Two World War II Novels
- War of the Rats by David L. Robbins (Bantam Books, 1999)
- Hart's War by John Katzenbach (Ballentine, 1999)
October 12: Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics by Jane Alexander (Public Affairs, 2000)
October 5: In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery (Profile Books, 2000)
September 28: Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles by William Laurence (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
September 21: Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Eric Larson (Crown, 1999)
September 14: The Farewell Symphony by Anna Harwell Celenza (Charlesbridge, 2000)
September 7: Two Outstanding Mysteries
- Cold Comfort: A Mystery by Scott Mackay (Carroll & Graf, 1998)
- The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter (Random House, 1999)
August 31: Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War by Jeff Shaara (Ballentine, 2000)
August 24: Make Believe by Joanna Scott (Little, Brown and Company, 2000)
August 17: A Book about Patrick O'Brian and Another by him
- Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed by Dean King (Henry Holt and Company, 2000)
- Hussein: An Entertainment by Patrick O'Brian (Norton, 2000)
August 10: Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World by David Keys (Ballentine, 1999)
August 3: A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-1998 by Alec Guinness (Viking, 1999)
July 27: Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language by Stephen Pinker (Basic Books, 1999)
July 20: Sister Wendy's 1000 Masterpieces (DK Publishing, 1999)
July 13: City of Light by Lauren Belfer (The Dial Press, 1999)
July 6: Blackjack-33: With Special Forces in the Viet Cong Forbidden Zone by James Donahue (Ballentine, 1999)
June 29: Three Books about Boating
- River-Horse: A Voyage Across America by William Least-Heat Moon (Houghton Mifflin, 1999)
- Passage to Juneau: A Sea and its Meanings by Jonathan Raban (Pantheon Books, 1999)
- 3 Years in a Boat by Stephen G. Ladd (Seekers Press, 2000)
June 22: The Battle of New Orleans by Robert V. Remini (Viking, 1999)
June 15: Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters by Ted Cohen (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
June 8: One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
June 1: Two Books about Abraham Lincoln
- Abe: A Novel by Richard Slotkin (Henry Holt and Company, 2000)
- Lincoln as I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999)
May 25: Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley (HarperCollins, 1999)
May 11: Wrongful Impeachment by Evan Mecham (Prime News Press, 1998)
May 4: Questions about Angels: Poems by Billy Collins (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)
April 27: The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine by Frank Huyler (University of California Press, 1999)
April 20: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Houghton-Mifflin, 1999)
April 13: Faded Coat of Blue by Owen Parry (Avon Books, 1999)
April 6: The Essential Charles Barsotti compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz (Workman, 1999)
March 30: Sleeping with Extraterrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety by Wendy Kaminer (Pantheon Books, 1999)
March 23: A Close Run Thing: A Novel of Wellington's Army of 1815 by Allan Mallinson (Bantam Books, 1999)
March 16: The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murders by Patricia Highsmith (Penzler Books, 1974)
March 9: Hard Time by Sara Paretsky (Delacorte Press, 1999)
March 2: Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw by Thomas Glivinic (The Harvill Press, 1999)
February 24: Confederacy of Dunces and The Neon Rainbow by John Kennedy Toole (1981 and 1989)
February 17: Need & Greed:The Story of the Largest Ponzi Scheme in American History by Stewart L. Weisman (Syracuse University Press, 1999)
February 10: Memories of the Great & the Good by Alistair Cooke (Arcade, 1999)
February 3: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf, 1987)
January 27: Once upon a Number:The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories by John Allen Poulos (Basic Books, 1999)
January 20: The Speedwell Voyage: A Tale of Piracy and Mutiny in the 18th Century by Kenneth Poolman (Naval Institute Press, 1999)
January 13: These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, Arizona Territories by Nancy E. Turner (HarperCollins, 1998)
January 6: White Death: The Blizzard of '77 by Erno Rossi (Seventy Seven Press, 1999)

1999 Columns

December 30: A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (Knopf, 1998)
December 23: Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself by Jerome Loving (University of California Press, 1999)
December 16: The Abyssinian by Jean-Christophe Rufin (Norton, 1999)
December 9: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter (Norton, 1998)
December 9: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokol and Jean Bricmont (Picador USA, 1998)
December 9: Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf, 1998)
December 9: The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character by Daniel J. Kevles (Norton, 1998)
December 9: Bucking the Sun by Ivan Doig (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
December 9: Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O'Brian (Norton, 1999)
December 9: Faith of My Fathers by John McCain with Mark Salter (Random House, 1999)
December 9: John McCain: An American Odyssey by Robert Timberg (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
December 9: A Maze of Murders by Roderic Jeffries (HarperCollins, 1998)
December 9: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)
December 2: River Rising: A Cherokee Odyssey by Frank Stewart (Wohali Press, 1998)
November 25: Mark Twain at the Buffalo Express: Articles and Sketches by America's Favorite Humorist, edited by Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg (Northern Illinois University Press, 1999)
November 18: Heartbreaker by Robert Ferrigno (Pantheon, 1999)
November 11: The Stalking Horse by Miriam Grace Monfredo (Berkeley Prime Crime, 1998)
November 4: Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder by James B. Stewart (Simon & Schuster, 1999)