Review: ‘The Complete Stories,’ by Flannery O’Connor
This collection — which appeared seven years after the Southern Gothic writer’s death in 1964 — was reviewed by Alfred Kazin.
Review: ‘Song of Solomon,’ by Toni Morrison
In the deep, sprawling 1977 story of Milkman Dead, the reviewer Reynolds Price found evidence for “the possibility of transcendence within human life.”
Review: ‘The Golden Notebook,’ by Doris Lessing
In 1962, our reviewer described this radically feminist novel — now considered Lessing’s most influential work — as “a coruscating literary event.”
Review: ‘The Jeweler’s Eye,’ by William F. Buckley Jr.
Mario Puzo, who reviewed this collection of the conservative thinker's essays, found himself charmed despite the politics.
Review: ‘The Liars’ Club,’ by Mary Karr
The Times would later call this 1995 memoir of a hardscrabble Texas childhood “one of the best books ever written about growing up in America.”
The Birth of The New York Times Book Review
The paper’s rich literary tradition can be traced back to its very first issue on Sept. 18, 1851.
‘Weather’
In 2020, as Covid-19 raged and protests swept the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Claudia Rankine wrote this poem for the Book Review.
Interview: Isabel Allende
The Chilean novelist was living in exile when her first novel was published in 1985. “In a way, I feel that I am working for my country, even if I don’t live there,” she told us.
Peeved, Irritated and Annoyed: Early Letters to the Editor
The Book Review’s letters page — the internet message board of its day — was filled with lively, opinionated missives from readers and authors.
Review: ‘The Woman Warrior,’ by Maxine Hong Kingston
This brilliant 1976 memoir evokes the author’s Chinese immigrant family and summons the ghosts who haunt it.
Review: ‘Sister Carrie,’ by Theodore Dreiser
The novel’s headline-making candor and explicitness led the Book Review to assure its readers, “It is a book one can very well get along without reading.”
Review: ‘O Pioneers!’ by Willa Cather
In 1913, The Times declared Cather’s “novel without a hero” to be “American in the best sense of the word.”
Interview: Ralph Ellison
“It is felt that there is something in the Negro experience that makes it not quite right for the novel,” Ellison told us when “Invisible Man” was published in 1952. “That’s not true.”
Review: ‘The Road,’ by Cormac McCarthy
In 2006, our reviewer correctly predicted that this father-son tale would eclipse the popularity of McCarthy’s 1992 hit, “All the Pretty Horses.”
Interview: Gore Vidal
Diane Johnson chatted with the confident writer in 1977, asking him to explain what made him a self-proclaimed “authority” on all things literary.
Review: Books About Babe Ruth
In 1974, Roger Angell celebrated four new biographies of the Bambino.
Review: ‘Persepolis,’ by Marjane Satrapi
A memoir and a history of Iran’s turbulent 20th-century politics, one comic strip frame at a time.
Review: ‘The Makioka Sisters,’ by Junichiro Tanizaki
A classic Japanese novel echoes Jane Austen, with instructive contrasts.
The First New York Times Book Review Best-Seller List
The best-seller lists as we know them today have their roots in the Aug. 9, 1942, issue — but the Book Review has been tracking sales for much longer than that.
Review: ‘The Street,’ by Ann Petry
This classic story of a single mother’s struggle against poverty, published in 1946, would become the first novel by a Black woman to sell a million copies.
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