True Books

You may have already heard about this book. You're going to hear a lot more, especially around here. It's a story of grief, of nature and friendship and loneliness, but it's really the story of an enc... (Tom)

McCarthy's memoir has long been celebrated (for good reason) for its tartly intelligent portrait of a smart young girl's loss of faith, and of the miserable years she spent with her cruel great uncle... (Tom)

Judge me if you will, but if I had to choose between reading these classic author interviews and the actual books those authors wrote, I might just reach for the interviews. They are full of insight,... (Tom)

I may be the only person in Seattle who hasn't read The Boys in the Boat (I will, I promise! I know it's great!), but even I know that the British-born boatbuilder George Yeoman Pocock is the philosop... (Tom)

I know it's early yet, but this is the best book I've read in 2015, and it might remain so. For over a decade Leovy has reported on murder in L.A., especially on the killing of black men (and boys) by... (Tom)

Before there was a Little House on the Prairie, or any other of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, there was Pioneer Girl, an autobiography she wrote in her early sixties but never published, although she... (Tom)

This was the cover in our nonfiction section that—sorry—turned the most heads during the holidays, but the book inside is more than just a macabre history. A head separated from its body carries a dee... (Tom)

For those thinking of Dr. King this week, because of Selma or his birthday, you might turn, if you haven't done so already, to Taylor Branch's three-volume biography of King, which doubles as a histor... (Tom)

The first selection for our Phinney by Post subscription service is a book I hadn't opened until a couple of months ago, but after reading just the first two pages I was pretty sure I had found Book #... (Tom)

My goodness. This week, when a customer's special order of two copies of Naifeh and Smith's recent biography of the doomed painter arrived, I was almost overcome by a physical desire to abandon the r...

Okay, I don't cook much from cookbooks—in fact, I don't cook much at all—so take this with a grain of sea salt, but in a season of gorgeous and appetizing cookbooks, Prune is the one (along with, of c... (Tom)

You'll be hearing a lot about Alan Turing this fall, with The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, telling the story of this math genius who played a crucial code-breaking role in World War... (Tom)

I'm not sure if all the fiscal malfeasance that's gone unpunished since Enron spectacularly imploded back in 2001 makes The Smartest Guys in the Room seem quaintly outdated now or even more compelling... (Tom)

Boy (or I should say "Girl"), Jill Lepore must have been thrilled when she came upon the previously unseen papers of Wonder Woman's creator William Marston. The facts, both sensational and substantial... (Tom)

I don't know about you, but I always feel like history happens to other people, in other places. And Red Love makes the case that one German family experienced more than its fair share of 20th-century... (Liz)

If you're tired of reading about vaccination only in bitter Facebook comment threads, you might be refreshed by On Immunity. Biss is the daughter of a doctor and a poet, and her little book is an exte... (Tom)

Wright's calmly intrepid reporting on al-Qaeda, in The Looming Tower, and Scientology, in Going Clear, made those the definitive books on their difficult subjects. Now he has taken on the apparently i... (Tom)

I'm usually too proud to confess an interest in self-help books ("Who needs help? Not me!"), but this one I embraced immediately. Maybe it's because Tharp's art form, dance, feels so distant and myste... (Tom)

Gossipy, intelligent, well-read, and well-written, Richard Burton's diaries, first published in 2012, are just about everything you could hope for from the form. Burton's artistry was always in danger... (Tom)

Perlstein's four-book project is remarkable not only for its subject—a liberal historian writing an at times sympathetic history of modern American conservatism, the dominant political movement of our... (Tom)

My copy of Homage to Catalonia which I bought for this month's Ridge Readers Book Club meeting is the 49th printing of the American edition. Why are we still reading Orwell's memoir of fighting in the... (Tom)

Old Books of the Week The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter Pitching in a Pinch by Christy Mathewson It's August, with the Mariners actually still in a pennant race, so let's take a few moments... (Tom)

Old Books of the Week The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter Pitching in a Pinch by Christy Mathewson It's August, with the Mariners actually still in a pennant race, so let's take a few moments... (Tom)

Writing in a clipped, hip style any James Ellroy fan will recognize, Selvin unearths the story of the long-neglected Berns, who in his short life, and his even shorter time at the top of pop, wrote "T... (Tom)

A few years ago, on vacation, I picked up an old copy of Act One, knowing only vaguely that it was a famous theater memoir. Some number of breathless, elated hours later, I picked my head up again. Wo... (Tom)

Harris's first book, Pictures at a Revolution, which be built around the five Best Picture Oscar nominees from 1967, was a smart treat, and in his second he returns to that magic number, telling the p... (Tom)

When I was writing A Reader's Book of Days I made a rule not to visit Usher's blog, Letters of Note, because there was so much good stuff there. (It was too tempting to crib.) Now he's made a big, lov... (Tom)