Books & Ideas

Unflowered Aloes

Why literary success is decided by chance, not destiny

Tom Bissell

Nonfiction Microreviews

April/May 2000

In Defense of Poetry

Put the literature back into literary studies.

Marjorie Perloff

Review: Hine and Males

Scott Saul

Nonfiction Microreviews

December 1999/January 2000

Review: The Last Avant-Garde

By David Lehman.

Michael Tyrell

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The Lost World of Richard Yates

Why a great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print.

Stewart O’Nan

Gould on God

Can religion and science be happily reconciled?

H. Allen Orr

Behind the Beat

The pages of Neurotica.

James Campbell

Nonfiction Microreviews

October/November 1999

Primo Levi’s Last Moments

On that tragic Saturday, only his body was smashed.

Diego Gambetta

Giant Steps

A review of two books on Coltrane.

Scott Saul

Review: Books on Euthanasia

Two new collections of essays contribute to the public debate—with varied results.

Jyl Gentzler

Review: Shakespeare

By Harold Bloom.

Robert Atwan

Review: The Color of Truth

By Kai Bird.

Jeff Jones

Review: Penthesilea

By Heinrich von Kleist.

Steve Dowden

Review: Oulipo Compendium

Edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie.

James Sallis

Microreviews

Eight new poetry collections.

The Big Picture

A review of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E. O. Wilson.

H. Allen Orr

How the Mind Really Works

An exchange on Robert C. Berwick and Jeremy C. Ahouse's review of Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works (BR, April/May 1998)

Steven Pinker
Robert C. Berwick
Jeremy C. Ahouse

Review: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

Invitations to danger and salvation that makes the blues the blues.

Jonathan Gill

The Softer Side of Sociobiology

The origins of human virtue remain far from certain.

H. Allen Orr

Dennett’s Strange Idea

On Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

H. Allen Orr

Race, Genes, and IQ

Critics of The Bell Curve have attacked every point in the book—except the most important one.

Ned Block

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