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Light and Dark in the Life of “Li’l Abner” Cartoonist Al Capp
Cartoonist Al Capp was rich before he turned thirty, published a comic strip that ran for forty-three years, and his fans included luminaries like Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck. Not bad for a guy...
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Liz Taylor as Cleopatra in an Epic Film Befitting its Hollywood Era
Against a contemporary cinematic landscape where major productions masquerade as humble indies, there’s something refreshing and almost quaint about Walter Wanger’s My Life with Cleopatra. His...
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A Visual Interpretation of Conversations with the Buoyant and Passionate...
It makes sense that a series of literary conversations might tell the story of Jorge Luis Borges’s life. Blind by the time the talks in The Last Interview and Other Conversations take place, Borges was...
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What a Trip: A Visual Take on Experimental Hallucinations by Neurologist...
If you’ve listened to the director’s commentary on The Royal Tenenbaums, you might remember that director Wes Anderson based Bill Murray’s sad sack character on neurologist Oliver Sacks. But if you...
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Back to the Drawing Board: Prep for Comic-Con with Our Illustrated Take on...
With Comic-Con International, the largest annual fan convention in the U.S., kicking off in San Diego next week, the comic timing feels right for delving into Sean Howe's exploration of life stories...
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Whole Foods, Whole Life: From the Ground Up
For a long time, Jeanne Nolan separated life into harsh divisions. Everything was either real or phony, authentic or materialistic. But when she left her life on a commune after seventeen years, she...
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An Enlightened Nancy Mitford on Frederick the Great
Nancy Mitford, described in her 1973 New York Times obituary as “unabashedly snobbish and devastatingly witty,” was an essayist, satirist, and novelist. She was also an historian and author of...
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Mother and Son Hit the Road in Richard Russo’s Memoir ‘Elsewhere’
Richard Russo loved his difficult mother. This is evident in grand gestures and small moments, both of which he details in his memoir Elsewhere, released this week in paperback. But his mother wasn’t...
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Traveling on the Heels of Henry James and His Masterwork: Portrait of a Novel
Any great work of art is a portrait of its maker. If you have any doubts about this, you might be persuaded by reading Michael Gorra’s Portrait of a Novel (now out in paperback), which traces the...
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Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of JFK: Tormented Love and Fatal...
You could blame the disappearance of a large woodland on the amount of paper that’s been printed to cover the subject of who killed John F. Kennedy. Norman Mailer called the assassination the largest...
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MK Asante Navigates the Trappings of ‘Killadelphia’
Within a single scene, MK Asante’s memoir Buck moves easily from a specific, action-packed narrative to a brush-stroked picture of Asante’s life as a whole. He quotes his mother’s letters to her former...
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US Open Primer: Borg, McEnroe, and The Golden Age of Tennis
The US Open started on Monday, and while in these first few days there are more matches than a fan can track, there will be segments of upcoming days when tennis is not on, and you need something to...
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Beyond Silent Spring: Environmentalist Rachel Carson and her Love of Marine Life
In 1962, Rachel Carson published an influential bestseller that received mention by President Kennedy in an otherwise routine press conference. As relayed in On a Farther Shore, William Souder’s...
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Twisted Mischief in Storyteller, The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl
If Roald Dahl were still alive, he would turn 97 this Friday. When you stop and think about it, it seems that the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Fantastic...
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My Brief History: Stephen Hawking on Black Holes and the Motivating Power of...
Cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has devoted his life to very complicated subjects, but that hasn’t infringed on his ability to write a concise, clear sentence. In his new memoir...
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Levels of Life: The Atmosphere of Love and Loss in New Memoir By Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes begins his new memoir Levels of Life, about the loss of his wife, with talk of hot air balloons and Sarah Bernhardt. The book’s first two sections are narrated with calm omniscience,...
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Jim Henson: A Passport to His Muppet Universe
In Brian Jay Jones’s exhaustive new biography Jim Henson, the author builds to an explosion of Henson’s universe into an array of filmed content that would shape countless childhoods and change the way...
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Becoming Mr. October, a New Memoir by Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson
By some diabolical equation beyond the psychological grasp of most New Yorkers, the Major League Baseball playoffs have started, and the Yankees are watching from home. The Pirates are in the...
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A Satisfying Stroll with a New Biography of Adventure Writer Patrick Leigh...
Patrick Leigh Fermor walked across a continent when he was eighteen, dated a princess, and kidnapped a German general. He published eight books about his adventures during his lifetime, and there might...
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Eminent Hipsters: The Greatest Hits of Creative Influence on Steely Dan’s...
The jazzy rock band Steely Dan went platinum several times, achieving popular success while somehow simultaneously gathering a cult-like following usually inspired by less prominent acts. They’re also...
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