Each week, we feature a great book from our archive of more than 300,000
original reviews, dating back to 1933. All selections are currently in print, so browse our editor's
selections, and discover a gem you might have missed in its heyday.
NONFICTION
Released: April 19, 1999
"A classic of Civil War literature worthy of a place beside the general's own Memoirs."
General William Tecumseh Sherman, perhaps the Union Army's fiercest and most complicated soldier, wages war in these letters against the Confederacy, the press—and himself.
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NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 28, 1959
"These stories are gentle, delicate and almost sound."
Excursions into other worlds of other depths have been the source material and trademark of Capote's literary career.
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FICTION
Released: April 1, 1934
"Headlined as the leading book on the publisher's list and sure of a good send-off."
Again an author who has built up a more or less established market, and his non appearance (in book form) over a period of several years, has stimulated interest in this first full length work since the publication of THE GREAT GATSBY.
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FICTION
Released: Jan. 23, 1958
"This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor."
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
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NONFICTION
Released: Sept. 21, 1983
"The least lazy of our critics, he may now be our best."
It's entirely possible that history's choice for the finest literary critic to find steady exposure in the pages of the New Yorker will not be Edmund Wilson—but rather John Updike, who here gathers over 100 reviews and essays from recent years.
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NONFICTION
Released: Sept. 27, 1965
"Twenty-one, and an Olympic champion, he has retired to the cloisters!"
FICTION
Released: Nov. 1, 1994
"A lively debut about residents of the Boston metropolitan area who don't summer in Hyannisport."
FICTION
Released: Nov. 3, 1976
When first seen at his second death, the solitary despot who has lived for a conjectural 107 to 232 years, lies in his dungheap "house of castaways," vultures pecking at his body while a cow appears on the balcony where he delivered his pronunciamentos.
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NONFICTION
Released: Sept. 4, 1996
"An up-close chance to meet a tough cookie who loves being a pro—and who probably wouldn't take your calls."
If the Girl Scout troops of Beverly Hills need an illuminating manual for their Fundamentals of Successful Producing merit badge, this is it.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 30, 1999
"Those who enjoy a little poison in their porridge will find it wicked good fun. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 10-12)"
The Baudelaire children—Violet, 14, Klaus, 12, and baby Sunny—are exceedingly ill-fated; Snicket extracts both humor and horror from their situation, as he gleefully puts them through one terrible ordeal after another.
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FICTION
Released: Jan. 10, 1963
"It is all expertly chilling and exciting."
A modern variant of The Third Man is sponsored by that book's author (Graham Greene says, "The best spy story I have ever read") and it introduces on this side of the water pseudonymous Mr. Le Carré, who is a fine contrast to flamboyant Mr. Fleming and who proves here that one can be just as unnerving by being thoroughly undemonstrative.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 1, 1991
"Richly done boffo winner."
Smashing debut novel in which screenwriter Bud Wiggin, a Thomas Wolfe for failed screenwriters, seems to be a stand-in for author Wagner—screenwriter of the stupid but successful Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Nightmare on Elm Street 3.
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