Books & Ideas

Feminist Icons in Love

The romantic obsessions of Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras

  • Vivian Gornick

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

A moral defense.

  • F. M. Kamm

Making History

In the new historical novel, the past is part of the fiction.

  • Richard A. Kaye

Do We Need a God?

Maybe not.

  • Richard Eldridge

Unnatural Sentences

Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing and Science.

  • Brenda Wineapple

Nonfiction Microreviews

October/November 2002

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Darwin and Design

A debate about the latest defense of intelligent design.

  • William A. Dembski
  • H. Allen Orr

Herkunftscomplex

On Thomas Bernhard, Austria’s most infamous novelist. 

  • Jason M. Baskin

Under the Influence

The intoxicating power of Kate Braverman's first novel.

  • Rick Moody

A Sublime Detective Story

William Dembski's No Free Lunch makes a confused case for Intelligent Design.

  • H. Allen Orr

Nonfiction Microreviews

Summer 2002

High Art in the Age of Oprah

The case of Jonathan Franzen.

  • James Campbell

Recent Books on Capital Punishment

 The nine volumes under review here add much of value to the already burgeoning literature on the death penalty.

  • Hugo Adam Bedau

Review: Crossing Over

Reporting from the border zones. 

  • Scott Saul

Nonfiction Microreviews

February/March 2002

The Territory of Trauma

A novelist confronts the ethics and politics of her art.

  • Joyce Hackett

On Paula Fox

Credible contradictions.

  • Randall Curb

Review: Stolen Lives

  • Susan Slyomovics

Nonfiction Microreviews

December 2001/January 2002

Alfred Nobel and His Prizes

Does literature really need a “gold standard”?

  • James Campbell

A Distinctive Kind of Loner 

The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

  • James Sallis

Love Among the Ruins

Reviewing Robert Clark. 

  • Tom Bissell

Review: The Metaphysical Club

  • John H. Summers

Nonfiction Microreviews

October/November 2001

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