The Shock of the New

Robert Hughes. Alfred A. Knopf, $49.95 (444pp) ISBN 978-0-679-72876-4

The author of The Fatal Shore and Time magazine's art critic here presents a greatly expanded version of a PBS television series on modern art, and includes some 270 color illustrations. Although he frequently deals in generalities, ``choice anecdotes, telling characterizations, witty observations flow from his pen,'' lauded PW . The ``chapters bristle with apt insights.'' (Aug.)

Featured Nonfiction Reviews

Daniel Saldaña París

Novelist París (Ramifications) reflects in these striking essays on the complicated relationship between place and identity. Traversing the cities “that have marked my life,” Continue reading »

John Gilbert McCurdy

The 1774 trial of British army chaplain Robert Newburgh (1742–1825) for “vicious and immoral behavior” sheds valuable light on contemporaneous ideas about homosexuality, Continue reading »

Dean Jobb

Jobb follows up The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream with a top-shelf work of true crime focused on lovestruck “gentleman thief” Arthur Barry (1896–1981). A con artist since his Continue reading »

Corinne Fowler

“Colonialism... affected the remotest corners” of Britain’s landscape, demonstrates historian and curator Fowler (Green Unpleasant Land) in this revelatory Continue reading »