Malcolm Gladwell uses a medical metaphor to explain modern culture. And his optimism recalls that of a medical forebear: Dr. Pangloss.

What are a couple of smart, ironic writers doing in a place like a casino? They're (how did you guess?) losing. But their loss is the readers' gain.

George Stephanopoulos's odyssey from star-struck, ambitious young politico to older, wiser, much richer pundit is an emblematic generational story -- not in a good way.

We should have guessed that Donald Trump (albeit completely inadvertently) is one of America's greatest political satirists.

"The Time of Our Time" is Mailer's compelling, exhausting anthologized account of Mailer's boxing match with history.

Norman Podhoretz's memoir of bare-knuckle intellectuals is good, trashy reading -- Jerry Springer by another name.

E. L. Doctorow's newest depicts a New York on its way to a spiritual awakening. But as a novel, it doesn't quite get out of bed.

In her new book, Susan Faludi takes her reporter's microscope in search of American men. Predictably, she misses the forest for the trees.

Out of old-fashioned Irish literary stock -- crazy father, long-suffering mother, many restless children -- Emer Martin makes a modern, fast-paced (if slightly woolly) novel.

We can't escape the accelerating pace of modern life, argues James Gleick, so we might as well enjoy it. But that doesn't leave time for much else -- say, reading.