By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The favorite guessing game in Rome these days is who will be the next pope. Few take it more seriously than the Gammarelli family, tailors to the Vatican for more than 200 years.
Bernard E. Trainor and Michael R. Gordon wrote what remains the seminal study of the Persian Gulf War, "The Generals' War." With the publication of "The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama," which follows their 2006 "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," they have written a two-volume history of the second war with Iraq that is likely to be considered definitive for some time to come.
It may be difficult to believe, but there still are two final residents in the remaining grace-and-favor apartments in London's Hampton Court, courtesy of the queen. And, perhaps, they still are coping with ghosts such as Queen Catherine Howard running screaming through the gallery of the palace before her head was cut off by King Henry VIII a few centuries ago.
Undeniably popular with readers over many decades, Anne Morrow Lindbergh always has struck me as a very problematic figure. She was a skilled writer with a peculiarly seductive style that she was adept at using to take people into the strange, self-referential world that was hers, the still point of whirling celebrity and notoriety mixed with travel and genuine exploration.
Despite the inimitable if occasionally pedantic charm of Alexander McCall Smith's writing, some readers may feel they get too little of Freddie de la Haye, the Pimlico terrier whose face adorns the jacket of this book.
No one needs, possibly, to establish with scholarly display and panoply that Americans don't like each other very much these days. The trick lies in establishing with some plausibility the reasons they don't like each other very much.
Thomas Mallon, author of eight well-regarded novels and seven works of nonfiction, has written the first significant historical fiction novel centered in the scandal that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency.
Craig Thompson's "Habibi" was one of two major graphic novel releases this fall inspired by the West's recent, disastrous interactions with the Islamic world. The other was "Holy Terror" by Frank Miller, a thinly veiled Batman story that pitted the caped crusader against al Qaeda.
It is rare that murder most foul is overwhelmed by literary grace, yet that is true of Benjamin Black's latest mystery. Even violent death can assume a lyrical tone when it is the work of an author for whom mysteries seem to have become a hobby since he claimed a major literary award under another name.
Freddie de la Hay is not the kind of dog who sneaks around, which would seem to disqualify him as a working member of the British intelligence service known as MI6. All Freddie wants from life is a kind owner, a comfortable bed and meaty dog biscuits.
One of the best preserved sculptures from Roman antiquity, the "Capitoline Venus," has left Italy for the first time in nearly 200 years for a special display at the National Gallery of Art.
In the North Alabama city of Cullman, forever changed by April's tornado outbreak, one historic spot went untouched.
In a north Alabama city forever changed by April's tornado outbreak, one historic spot went untouched by destruction.
''It has been nearly forty years since she has seen him. Or to be exact - and it is one of the things she values in herself, her ability to be exact - thirty six years and four months. She saw him last on June 23, 1971. The day had changed her."
The analysis of the soul of a tiny white car is the kind of thing only Alexander McCall Smith can write about and get away with. Yes, she's back, the inimitable Mma Precious Ramotswe, the product of the amiable imagination of the author with his unalloyed fascination with Botswana, the country where he once lived and taught law in its university.
