From the longest-running, most influential book review in America, here is its best, funniest, strangest, and most memorable coverage over the past 125 years.
Since its first issue on October 10, 1896, The New York Times Book Review has brought the world of ideas to the reading public. It is the publication where authors have been made, and where readers first encountered the classics that have enriched their lives.
Now the editors have curated the Book Review’s dynamic 125-year history, which is essentially the story of modern American letters. Brimming with remarkable reportage, this book collects interesting reviews, never-before-heard anecdotes about famous writers, and spicy letter exchanges. Here are the first takes on novels we now consider masterpieces, including a long-forgotten pan of Anne of Green Gables and a rave of Mrs. Dalloway, along with reviews and essays by Langston Hughes, Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Nora Ephron, and more.
Listeners will discover how literary tastes have shifted through the years—and how the Book Review’s coverage has shaped so much of what we read today.
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"A fascinating selection of reviews, letters, interviews, essays, announcements, book lists, bits of gossip and op-ed pieces published in the supplement since its first appearance on Oct. 10, 1896 . . . An ebullient celebration of literature."
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
[A] meticulously crafted celebration of the written word . . . Each chapter is full of entertaining reviews and book covers, plus delightful photos. Literature lovers are in for a real treat.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Dominic Hoffman, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice. He is a Los Angeles–based actor of stage, screen, and television. He has appeared in such television shows as The Shield, NYPD Blue, and The Jamie Foxx Show. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as well as the American Conservatory Theater.
Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times and London Sunday Times bestselling author of twenty-four stand-alone novels and three series, through the genres of fiction, romance, young-adult romance, mystery, and science fiction. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the Alex Award from the YA Library Services Association, and the NH Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit. She studied creative writing at Princeton University and received her masters from Harvard. Visit her website at JodiPicoult.com.
Junot Díaz is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, he is fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and is the Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Robert Petkoff is an actor and audiobook narrator who has won a prestigious Audie Award and multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice. He has appeared on Chappelle’s Show, Law & Order, and Quantum Leap. His Broadway credits include Sir Robin in Spamalot, Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof, and Tateh in Ragtime.
Sloane Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp and three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number.
Roxane Gay is a New York Times bestselling author of several books and story collections. Her writing has appeared in Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Nation, Rumpus, Glamour, Salon, the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy culture blog, Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, and many others. She is the coeditor of PANK and essays editor for the Rumpus.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling memoir Little Failure, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the novel Super Sad True Love Story, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. His books regularly appear on best-of lists around the world and have been translated into twenty-nine languages.
Jericho Brown is author of The Tradition, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received numerous prizes, including the Whiting Award. Brown’s poems have appeared in numerous major publications. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sarah Weinman is the editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. She covers book publishing for Publishers Marketplace and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Buzzfeed, among other outlets. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Silver Sparrow, Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and An American Marriage, a New York TImes bestseller. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, the Believer, the New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an associate professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.