Books Name: Gary Snyder.Occupation: Beat poet and rancher in rural Northern California.Age: 75.Residence: "The nearest town is Nevada City. That's 25 miles away. We're three miles from the paved road. We ha ...   More

Books Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian NationsBy Charles Wilkinson (W.W. Norton, 541 pages, $26.95)Viewed as one long Trail of Tears, the history of Native Americans had reached the end of the road ...   More

Books July 4 marked the 200th birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and two new biographies celebrate the bicentennial of the tortured New England novelist. Brenda Wineapple's Hawthorne: A Life, now in paperback ...   More

Books Lincoln's address at Cooper Union is the most important speech he made that historians have written the least about. In it, the presidential longshot from Illinois persuasively but dispassionately ref ...   More

Books Judging a book by its cover, as the old saw goes, is always a risky business. Still, one would hope that the design of a book would at least provide a vague hint of its genre. The pastoral farm scene ...   More

Books american dynasty: aristocracy, fortune and the politics of deceit in the house of bushUntil recently, books critical of the Bush administration were rare from mainstream publishers. Bestselling writer ...   More

Books The Battle of Teutoburg Forest was in many ways the 9/11 of the ancient world. In 9 A.D., in a period of about an hour, Germanic "barbarians" under a mercurial chieftain ambushed and slaughtered three ...   More

Books Landmark Books introduced history to a whole generation of Americans growing up in the 1950s and '60s. These weren't silly kiddie books cranked out by hack writers but lively works by major auth ...   More

Books lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent by Chris Lydgate (Scribe Publications, 318 pages, $21)Published in Australia, Lee's Law has not yet achieved mainstream distribution in the U.S. but is ava ...   More

Books john paul jones: sailor, hero, father of the american navy by Evan Thomas (Simon and Schuster, 381 pages, $26.95)Despite his book's subtitle, author Evan Thomas makes a pretty convincing case th ...   More