Nattily dressed in a dark suit and red and blue striped tie, serious historian David McCullough let his droll humor shine through last night during his Arts & Letters Live appearance at the Fairmont Hotel. His new book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, maps the octopus-like reach of French…
It was 1970. I was 12 years old, sitting the dark of Lowe’s 83rd Street, a movie theater in New York City, when I had my first psychedelic experience. No, nobody slipped a tab in my Milk Duds. I was watching The Phantom Tollbooth, the first and so far only…
Sex, spies and Sookie Stackhouse: that’s what makes our first summer reading list go ’round. Brace yourself; there’s not a Stieg Larsson novel in sight. This month, in honor of summer vacation, we attempt the daunting task of narrowing down books for the beach. Beach reading is the most democratic…
Pico Iyer is a travel writer’s travel writer, one of a small elite among the living (also Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Jan Morris) whose travel writing ranks as literature. In an era when most travel publications want stories about Five Fab Luxury Hotels for Dogs or Ten Terrific Places to…
Conspiracy theories can be fun, right? It’s a lot cooler to believe that little green men from some distant planet crashed on a Roswell ranch in July 1947 than to think that the Soviets were trying to scare Americans with a stunt straight out of a science fiction novel. But…
Star Jones was in town Friday night promoting her new novel, Satan’s Sisters, a fictitious behind-the-scenes look at the sordid lives and conflicting personalities of five women who host a daytime talk show. Imagine that. After lap-band surgery, shedding 160 pounds — “a whole person,” she said — and open…
Juicy Fruit. That’s the answer to the question I’ve had since I first read (and then reread) The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. So I’m grateful to the person who asked author Erik Larson about his inspiration for the book…
I’m not ashamed — I’ve totally watched Celebrity Apprentice this season. And while I found myself irritated by the scheming of TV personality, author and lawyer Star Jones, I gotta say, she knew how to play the game when she wasn’t the project manager. Delegate, work below the radar, call…
On the occasional occasions when I watch The Biggest Loser, I’m in it for the weigh-in: the glory of success, the tragedy of defeat, the big people in little clothes, the gradual emergence of muscles, the transformations. I love a good makeover. The other stuff — the sweating, the grunting,…
Upon entering the bookstore you could hear the horde of women upstairs on the second floor chatting away like excited schoolgirls. With fresh new books in hand, they waited anxiously for the woman of their nonfiction dreams to greet them with the latest and greatest details about last week’s night…
