The History of Reading

Alberto Manguel. Penguin Books, $20 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-14-016654-5

Manguel attests to reading's power to transform while tracing its 4000-year history. (Oct.)

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 »