Amy E. Schwartz looks at Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.
“Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough,” says a character in the film classic Chinatown. Reviewer Aaron Mesh concludes that movies have been around long enough to join the list.
Anthony Aveni finds a young writer's book about the scientific clairvoyance of artists every bit as insightful as the ideas of his subjects.
Walter Reich hopes that What Makes a Terrorist will finally dispel the notion that poverty breeds terrorism.
Mimi Schwartz reviews a new guide to Queens, the largest of the city’s five boroughs and the second most populous (after Brooklyn). The book's author calls it “the most heterogeneous place in the world.”
Jay Tolson reviews a new book by Charles Taylor, "a profoundly learned thinker (who is also a believing Christian)" that tries to explain the persistence of religion in a secular world.
A new book examines a day in the life of the body, and reviewer Sharman Apt Russell appreciates its many "intriguing byways—orgasms, napping, the common cold, and nightmares."
Alexandra Vacroux learns that the lesson of a new book is to come to grips with the myriad ways that numbers rule our lives, and to understand that some thinking is better done by human than computer.