Search results for

Who says unlikable characters make for unlikable books? The prickly people in Zoe Heller's The Believers are infused with wit and intelligence. Author Meghan Daum says she has recommended the poignant satire to more friends than she can count.

What began as a Harvard-only website is now the social networking tool of almost 500 million people worldwide. David Kirkpatrick examines the site's short history and its long-term potential in The Facebook Effect.

Author Nicholas Carr is says the Internet is changing the way we think — and not for the better. In his new book, The Shallows, he laments that the Web has returned humans to the "natural state of distractedness" that served us well back when we were cavemen.

In Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, the best-selling author writes about a 13-year-old amateur attorney. Grisham says writing his first book for young readers was a challenge because he didn't want to talk down to his audience. He tells NPR's Michele Norris that kids are "a tougher crowd" than adults.

Author Helen Simonson risks her literary pretensions to admit a lifelong secret attraction to the Regency romance novels of Georgette Heyer. The dampened muslin dresses, the highly polished boots — for her, nothing beats these tales of heroines who require a man with a firm hand on the bridle.

Megan Stack hadn't planned on becoming a war correspondent. But then Sept. 11 happened, and she found herself in the Middle East — the beginning of a seven-year stint of wartime reporting. In Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, Stack reflects on the experience of reporting from war-torn countries.

George Washington was a military veteran with a checkered past. John Adams was a farmer turned lawyer. And according to historian Jack Rakove, the men we know as America's Founding Fathers were, in general, disinclined to revolt. Rakove's new book is Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist opens up about his experiences as a father to four children and husband to writer Ayelet Waldman in his book of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, now out in paperback.

Call him creepy, but author Tom Rachman says the liveliest reads are about the dead. Obit lovers insist that the best remembrances are more about life than about death, and Rachman agrees. He recommends The Daily Telegraph Fourth Book of Obituaries — a very British collection of rogue remembrances.

Crosley's first collection of humor essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, focused on her misadventures in Manhattan. In How Did You Get This Number, the Random House publicist takes her funny, fish-out-of-water experiences overseas.