Blog on Books - Book Reviews

Spiders And Fighting And Trees, Oh My: Filming ‘The Hunger Games’

tobia — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:59:32 +0000

Star Jennifer Lawrence and director Gary Ross talk about shooting their new film, The Hunger Games . Lawrence underwent grueling training and braved on-set spiders to make Katniss Everdeen come to life.

Can Mo’ Money Really Mean Mo’ Problems?

boodollra — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:58:13 +0000

Many people believe money can solve all their problems. But Richard Watts, a financial and legal advisor to the very rich, says there’s some truth to the saying, “more money, more problems.” Watts speaks with host Michel Martin about his new book, Fables of Fortune: What Rich People Have That You Don’t Want

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Can Mo’ Money Really Mean Mo’ Problems?

‘Drift’: Rachel Maddow On Why We Go To War

yourpharmacystoreonline — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:57:16 +0000

In her new book, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow invokes Thomas Jefferson to argue for limited government — at least in the case of the military. She argues that sometimes we got to war because we’ve invested so much in military strength.

Book review: ‘The Hunt for KSM’ is a true thriller

banmart — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:56:38 +0000

Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer retrace the hunt, capture and interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The tale told by former Los Angeles Times reporters Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer in “The Hunt for KSM,” the story of the pursuit, capture and interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of9/11, at times so resembles something straight out of “24″ or the Bourne movies that the authors have to keep reminding the reader that this is for real. On the one hand, “The Hunt for KSM” is a flat-out thriller.

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Book review: ‘The Hunt for KSM’ is a true thriller

Craig Claiborne Set the Standard for Restaurant Reviews

kneeniatt — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:56:03 +0000

Craig Claiborne’s weekly restaurant reviews, which first appeared 50 years ago this month, separated the best restaurants from the ones merely favored by the aristocracy.

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Craig Claiborne Set the Standard for Restaurant Reviews

Bahrain: A New Sectarian Conflict?

varfBovetrona — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:54:32 +0000

Joost Hiltermann Getty Images Bahraini youths run for cover as police fire teargas during Labor Day protests in the Manama suburb of Sanabis, May 1, 2012 Until 2011, the tiny island nation of Bahrain was mainly known to the outside world for one thing: an annual Formula One car race, the first of its kind in the Middle East, that signified the country’s arrival among the community of stable advanced nations. But then came last spring’s popular uprising and brutal government crackdown, and a different side of this Gulf monarchy came to light: the longstanding grievances held by many Bahrainis, including above all members of the island’s Shia majority, against its Sunni ruling family, who in turn seem prepared to use force to hold onto power. The regime prevailed, and after inviting an investigation of human rights abuses last fall, it suggested it was bringing the country back to normal; this spring’s Grand Prix would show the world it had succeeded

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Bahrain: A New Sectarian Conflict?

Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison

axionoAnyncd — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:53:58 +0000

Fox is the empire’s good son, but also its most toxic legacy.

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Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison

‘Fug You’: The Wild Life Of Ed Sanders

teaxiamet — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:53:30 +0000

Ed Sanders co-founded the legendary avant-rock band The Fugs, and went on to be an important member of the Youth International Party — the Yippies. He’s also a classical scholar who’s written a new memoir of life on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1960s.

How to End This Depression

Brortiose — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:50:18 +0000

Paul Krugman Susan Walsh/AP Images President Obama on a tour of the Master Lock factory in Milwaukee with the companyâ€™s senior vice-president, Bon Rice, February 2012 The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives.

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How to End This Depression

How The Valdez Oil Spill Shaped ExxonMobile

GestoreCart — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:49:07 +0000

Steve Inskeep talks to Steve Coll about his new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power . In it, Coll delves into the business model of one of the country’s largest and most profitable corporations

Barnes & Noble Deal Gives Microsoft Door To E-Books

CleaspCasia — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:48:24 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are teaming up to create a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary that will house the digital and college businesses of the bookseller and include a Nook application for Windows 8

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Barnes & Noble Deal Gives Microsoft Door To E-Books

Beijing Dilemma: Is Chen Guangcheng the Next Fang Lizhi?

Thahnonealkax — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:47:28 +0000

Perry Link Getty Images A Chinese State TV broadcast on June 12, 1989, showing the arrest warrant for astrophysicist Fang Lizhi and his wife Li Shuxian, after both had taken refuge at the US Embassy in Beijing on June 5 The Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng, blind since childhood, self-taught in the law, defender of women’s rights to resist forced abortion, thorn in the side of local despots in his home district of Linyi in Shandong province, veteran of a four-year prison sentence on the spurious charge of “organizing a mob to disturb traffic,” and since then victim—along with his wife and daughter—of extra-legal house arrest and occasional beatings , has escaped confinement. Rights activists who helped him have begun to disappear into police custody. Reports say he is sequestered in the US Embassy in Beijing.

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Beijing Dilemma: Is Chen Guangcheng the Next Fang Lizhi?

Woodward Responds to Bradlee Watergate Excerpt

JessicaClarkson — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:47:01 +0000

Remarks from 1990 in a new book about Ben Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, drew a defense from the reporter Bob Woodward.

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Woodward Responds to Bradlee Watergate Excerpt

Paul Krugman’s Prescription For A ‘Depression’

Brortiose — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:44:10 +0000

In his new book, End This Depression Now! Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate, argues that Keynesian fixes can solve our economic woes.

How Books Will Survive Amazon

beauttose — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:43:47 +0000

Jason Epstein Jens Ulrich Koch/Getty Images Books at an Amazon logistics center, Bad Hersfeld, Germany, October 23, 2007 So far discussion of the Justice Department’s suit against Apple and several major book publishers for conspiring to fix retail prices of e-books has omitted the major issue: the impact of digitization on the book industry generally. The immediate symptoms are Amazon’s own pricing strategy—which, unlike Apple’s and the publishers’, is to sell e-books below cost to achieve market share and perhaps a monopoly—and the federal suit challenging Apple’s and the publishers’ counterattack. The revolutionary process by which all books, old and new, in all languages, will soon be available digitally, at practically no cost for storage and delivery, to a radically decentralized world-wide market at the click of a mouse is irreversible

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How Books Will Survive Amazon