The Week: Most Recent Arts & Life:

Louise Penny's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:30:00 -0400

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (Touchstone, $15). A perfect jewel of a book. It's not a murder mystery; indeed, it's not clear any crime has even been committed. A British schoolgirl accuses an older woman and her middle-aged daughter of abducting her. The girl describes the women's home perfectly, though they claim to have never seen her before.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co., $16). One of the earliest murder investigations by police. Summerscale follows Inspector "Jack" Whicher, one of the original Scotland Yard detectives, as he investigates the murder...

Jeffery Deaver's 6 favorite espionage books

The Week — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:39:00 -0400

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (Penguin $14). The first James Bond novel was a departure from the headier, heavier fiction about secret agents written before then. Suave, dark, and blunt, Bond is an instantly appealing character. Those familiar only with the Bond films should pick up this or any of Fleming’s books—you’ll get a man who’s far more complex than you might think.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (Penguin, $16). Le Carré’s protagonist, George Smiley, is the antithesis of Bond, but is equally arresting as he methodically goes about...

Bill James' 6 favorite crime-solving books

The Week — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:46:00 -0400

Final Verdict by Adela Rogers St. Johns (out of print). Adela Rogers St. Johns’s father, Earl Rogers, was perhaps the most famous lawyer of his time. Put it this way: When Clarence Darrow was arrested and put on trial for bribery, he hired Earl Rogers to defend him. Adela was among the best-known writers of her era. This book is her memoir of growing up in her father’s law office—an absolutely astonishing true-life story, told by a skilled and talented author.

He Made it Safe to Murder by Howard K. Berry (out of print). Moman Pruiett, an Oklahoma lawyer from 1895 into the early...

Mark Malloch-Brown's 6 favorite 'novels of empire'

The Week — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:50:00 -0400

King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard (Dover, $3). I was once an old-fashioned British schoolboy, of perhaps the last generation to be brought up on the novels of empire. King Solomon’s Mines, published in 1885, had it all: Oppression, slavery, the hidden world of a lost civilization, and tribes living by social codes that are abruptly disrupted by British treasure-hunters.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Dover, $1.50). The ultimate chronicle of occupation and the effect on the colonialist of untrammeled power. For the ivory collector Kurtz, wrestling with his demons up the...

Dambisa Moyo's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:05:00 -0500

The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov (PublicAffairs, $28). A well-argued brief that challenges our widely held belief that social media and cybertechnology are enhancing democracy, human rights, and freedoms around the world. Far from helping, Morozov very compellingly argues, they’re hindering.

The Party by Richard McGregor (Harper, $28). I am enamored of all things Chinese, so McGregor’s book—subtitled The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers—was always going to grab my attention. He provides a peek behind the “Red Curtain” at the political structures...

Brian Cox's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:24:00 -0500

In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching by P.D. Ouspensky (Mariner, $15). The story of George Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic, and his search for consciousness. It’s a very good introduction for anybody who is interested in esotericism and the esoteric nature of life.

Meetings With Remarkable Men by G.I. Gurdjieff (Penguin, $16). Gurdjieff’s own book about his wanderings. He formed his teachings around the series of people he met. It’s kind of a classic road book—and wonderful.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl...

David L. Ulin's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:49:00 -0500

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $14). Reporting from the front lines of the 1960s, Didion highlights fragmentation and the loss of narrative, which, 40 years later, remain our prevailing cultural dislocations. Cogent, piercing, ruthless, the essays in this book are models of the form.

The Confessions of St. Augustine (Dover, $4). Featuring the first self-conscious first-person narrator in literature, Augustine’s account of his spiritual journey from dissolution to transcendence radiates with humanity. Living 1,700 years ago, he faced the same issues...

Kate Betts' 6 favorite books about style icons

The Week — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:48:00 -0500

D.V. by Diana Vreeland (Da Capo, $17). This is a must-read for the fashion world, but anyone can enjoy its feel for what the business was like in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, and how "Mrs. Vreeland" dominated it. Her energy and enthusiasm for life just radiate from the pages of this book. She writes about meeting Condé Nast, driving to Long Island in a taxicab with Clark Gable, discovering Twiggy. This book lets the reader inside an extraordinary life.

The World of Carmel Snow by Carmel Snow (out of print). To understand the way magazine editors shape fashion—or how they...

6 books that encourage tourism

The Week — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:59:00 -0500

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (Signet, $8). Twain’s novel about Americans traveling through Europe and the Holy Land mocks Americans’ penchant for tacky tourism: “We find a piece of the true cross in every old church we go into... And as for the bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary.” What would he make of the Twain-land erected in his hometown of Hannibal, Mo.?

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (Bantam, $6). “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles,” Whitman writes. At his house museum...

Tony Hiss' 6 favorite travel reads

The Week — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:16:00 -0500

Roumeli by Patrick Leigh Fermor (NYRB Classics, $16). It’s impossible to create a list of great travel books without at least one by Fermor, the best of the best. Wherever life takes him, Fermor is the quintessential Deep Traveler, eagerly awaiting whatever will unfold during the day ahead. This book, set in northern Greece, is beautifully crafted, like all of Fermor’s books.

Adventures in Afghanistan by Louis Palmer (Octagon, $19). Alternately hair-raising and awe-inspiring. Palmer, traveling in the years just after Soviet occupation, is led to thriving (and most of us would say unlikely...

Timothy Donnelly's 6 favorite contemporary poets

The Week — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:41:00 -0500

Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch (Ugly Duckling, $14). In this book about New York, inspired by the travel diaries of the Japanese poet Basho, Cotner and Fitch perfected a style—hip, wry, goofy, chill, patient, wide-eyed, curious, wise—that’s as difficult to pin down as it is infectious. Reading this book enhances the way you perceive what’s new as it gently reanimates what you think you already know.

The Waste Land and Other Poems by John Beer (Canarium, $14). This tongue-in-cheek homage to various literary monuments (including works by Marx, Rilke, and...

6 book recommendations from Greil Marcus

The Week — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:13:00 -0500

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin, $16). I had tremendous fun with this 2009 novel when it came out, but it’s stayed in my mind as a vision of ugliness—heroin in hippie L.A. as a vast conspiracy, the scope of which private eye Doc Sportello is only beginning to glimpse when the book ends, which is why there has to be a sequel.

Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta (Scribner, $15). Inside its 1970s-radicals-gone-underground plot, this novel hides a gleeful, infinitely detailed picture of just how smart a 15-year-old boy can be, especially when he’s obsessed with 1960s music.

When...

Gary Shteyngart's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:25:00 -0400

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner, $17). LeBlanc spent 10 years shadowing an impoverished “random family” in the Bronx to create one of the most harrowing works of nonfiction ever. It’s a mix of anthropology, street-smarts, and nonstop heartbreak, written with style and compassion.

1984 by George Orwell (Signet, $8). Orwell’s dystopian nightmare strikes me as also being a powerful love story of two people trying to get it on amid a repressive political system. The oddball British actress Suzanna Hamilton starring as Julia in the film adaptation—hot.

Native...

Spencer Wells' 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:10:00 -0400

Anthropologist and geneticist Spencer Wells, "explorer in residence" at the National Geographic Society and author of Pandora’s Seed, a new book about how the invention of agriculture profoundly reshaped human nature, discusses six of his all-time favorite reads:

The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (HarperCollins, $15). Diamond’s first book for a popular audience explored deep issues in human evolutionary history, as well as many of the themes he later expanded upon in Guns, Germs, and Steel. A fascinating read.

The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (Vintage, $16). A...

Jason Hartley's 6 favorite books

The Week — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:11:00 -0400

Jason Hartley, author of The Advanced Genius Theory, says some artists, from Miguel Cervantes to Bob Dylan, are so advanced that the rest of us can't keep up with them. The Week asked him to suggest a few books that help illuminate his theory:

Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster, $15). Dylan is the ultimate Advanced musician, having made bewildering career choices that have angered and confused his fans. One such choice was writing an autobiography that barely mentions his greatest hits but describes in detail the recording of obscure albums, and also muses about...

Christopher Hitchens: 6 influential books

The Week — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:25:00 -0400

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (Scribner, $16). The story of a Welsh coal-mining community, as related by a boy named Huw Morgan, this novel had a seismic effect on me when I was young, showing as it did the existence of another class of people—and another nation speaking a separate language—within the British Isles. It captures a vanished age.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (Scribner, $15). Long before Solzhenitsyn, this Hungarian refugee (who had only endured actual prison under Franco’s fascism) managed to imagine the workings of Stalin’s secret jails...