In this excruciatingly honest autobiographical work, author Mehta conducts an exquisite exploration of his love life as a young man, attempting to focus an objective lens on the most subjective of Continue reading »
Imagine: you're a middle-aged adult and your elderly parent offers you a packet of love letters ("red letters") from an adulterous relationship that took place just before you were Continue reading »
Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing
Ved Mehta
A poignant tribute from a flawed but well-placed Boswell, Mehta's book revisits (through memories, letters and interviews) the career of William Shawn, who edited the New Yorker from 1951 to 1987. Continue reading »
In 1949, at age 15, Mehta left his native India to spend three years at the Arkansas School for the Blind. In this vivid memoir, written with great sensitivity and without self-pity, he describes the Continue reading »
This sixth volume of Mehta's lively, affecting autobiography covers his experiences at Pomona College, Calif., in the 1950s, when, despite his blindness, he tried to carry on the normal life of an Continue reading »
Mehta, the well-known Indian-born writer, affectionately relives his undergraduate years at Oxford's Balliol College in an amusing, wonderfully observant, self-deprecating memoir. Despite his Continue reading »
In a quietly devastating, gripping political chronicle based on his frequent trips to India between 1982 and 1994, Indian-born Mehta, a New Yorker staff writer, ruefully portrays a nation mired in Continue reading »
Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier
Megan Kate Nelson
This richly layered portrait of the 19th-century frontier from historian Nelson (Saving Yellowstone) spotlights figures whose complex lives embody an era of “chaotic and Continue reading »
America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
Eddie S Glaude
Bestseller Glaude (Begin Again) offers a forceful counternarrative to the official commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary by surveying the horrors attendant to some of the Continue reading »
Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World
Anon138
Historian Wyman (The Verge) upends myths about the rise of civilization in this profound and enchanting study. He begins by noting that “in the last several decades, our grasp Continue reading »
Gather: Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness
Ashanté M Reese
In this phenomenal meditation on food’s role in Black history and culture, anthropologist Reese (Black Food Matters) shares guiding principles gleaned from Black social Continue reading »