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Mark Newman, co-author of The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live, says there are more things to understand about the world than how many acres there are in a country. The new book redraws the world in ways other than by land mass. ()
Literary translation isn't at all straightforward: A single word can determine the arc of a work. ()
Terry Tempest Williams tackles the collision of the human and natural worlds. ()
November 21, 2008 · In a new book, authors Roger Bennett and Josh Kun detail American Jewish history through vinyl albums. They are trying to answer questions such as, "Who are we?" and "What are we inheriting?" in what Bennett calls the "beginning of a journey." ()
November 21, 2008 · Fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books lined up Thursday night to get an early look at the new big-screen adaptation — bringing with them lawn chairs, sleeping bags and cheerleader-style chants in honor of the story's heroes. ()
November 21, 2008 · Bob Brier, mummy expert, Egyptologist and co-author of The Secret of the Great Pyramid, discusses theories about how the ancient Egyptians managed to build the Great Pyramid. New research suggests a ramp inside the pyramid may have been the key to its construction. ()
November 18, 2008 · To swipe the immortal lines uttered by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, a great mystery should take "the lid off life and let [you] look at the works." Maureen Corrigan's picks for the top five crime novels of the year do just that. ()
November 20, 2008 · Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, a revision of a trilogy of novels from the 1990s, won the National Book Award for fiction Wednesday night in New York. Annette Gordon-Reed won the nonfiction award for The Hemingses of Monticello, about Thomas Jefferson's hidden slave family. ()
November 20, 2008 · The teen vampire movie Twilight opens in theaters Friday. The movie follows the best-selling series of romance-thriller novels, set in the small and rainy hamlet of Forks on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Despite its remoteness, the town has become a pilgrimage destination for readers from around the world. ()
November 19, 2008 · A photographer and a comedy writer went through over 50,000 head shots and picked out those that "took our breath away." The book that resulted is a bizarre tutorial in the art of getting noticed, starring an actress who will only wear pink and other entertaining dreamers. ()
November 18, 2008 · Why do Asian kids outperform American kids in math? How did Bill Gates become a billionaire computer entrepreneur? Malcolm Gladwell takes on these questions and more in his book Outliers. He argues that the "self-made man" is a myth. ()
November 18, 2008 · In More Information Than You Require, the follow-up to the best-selling The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman offers another compilation of false facts and trivia. ()
November 19, 2008 · Ann Leary's new book is about a woman whose husband (a TV star) may be cheating on her. In real life, Leary is the wife of comedian and actor Denis Leary. She says that while the main character bears a resemblance to her, the book is not entirely based on fact. ()
November 18, 2008 · Whoopi Goldberg in a milk bath? Meryl Streep in a white mime face? After training her lens on some of the most notable faces of our day, the photographer reveals the stories behind some of her famous portraits. ()
November 17, 2008 · Awkward over hors d'oeuvres? A mess with martinis? Knowing what to say at a cocktail party can be overwhelming — but these three books will have you culturally informed in no time. ()
November 16, 2008 · Growing up during the Reagan era, Jason Eskenazi heard so much about "The Evil Empire" that when the Berlin Wall came down, he had to go visit it. He ended up spending more than a decade photographing life in the former Soviet Union. ()
Awkward over hors d'oeuvres? Knowing how to make small talk is tough. These books may help.
Pitch darkness moves the world with a different logic in these three books.
Books are only things, but writers like Crisp, Warhol and Byron are individuals.
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