Opinion: The Latest Reports from The Washington Posts ‘Book Party’

Here are the latest reports from The Washington Posts ‘Book Party’.

If you lose your home, you lose everything else, too

EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City By Matthew Desmond Crown. 418 pp. $28. Thank you, Matthew Desmond. Thank you for writing about destitution in America with astonishing specificity yet without voyeurism or judgment. Thank you for showing it is possible to compose spare, beautiful prose about a complicated policy problem. Thank you for […]

This is the closest thing we’ve ever have to a Hillary Clinton political manifesto

Hillary Clinton felt misunderstood. It was late 1994, Republican revolutionaries had stormed the House, and the first lady worried that it was her fault. Had she pushed too hard on health-care reform? Did voters resent her influence in her husband’s administration? During a meeting with confidantes in the White House residence, Clinton held back tears […]

The “racial procrastination” of Barack Obama

THE BLACK PRESIDENCY: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America By Michael Eric Dyson Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 346 pp. $27 In April of last year, Michael Eric Dyson wrote a lengthy and brutal takedown of his old friend and mentor, Cornel West, labeling the black philosopher a narcissistic, washed-up scholar overcome by petty […]

Yes, Hillary Clinton barked like a dog on the campaign trail. But she has also endured ‘talking dog syndrome.’
During a campaign stop this week in Reno, Nev., Hillary Clinton made some Internet when she joked it would be a good idea to train a dog to bark at GOP presidential candidates whenever they say something untrue. Recalling a radio ad that ran in rural Arkansas during her husband’s old campaigns there, in which […]

17 years after Columbine, the mother of one of the killers finally tells her story

A MOTHER’S RECKONING: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy By Sue Klebold Crown Publishers. 305 pp. $28. Five days after the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, and just hours after they cremated the remains of their son Dylan — cremation was the only option, really, because a grave site would certainly be vandalized […]

Hillary Clinton reviewed Henry Kissinger’s latest book — and loved it

A former secretary of state had a star turn in the PBS Newshour Democratic debate on Thursday night. No, I don’t mean Hillary Clinton – rather, it was Henry Kissinger, who served as America’s top diplomat under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) took Clinton to task for being close to her predecessor. “In […]

The 2015 National Book Award nominees, for nonfiction

Memoirs dominate the long-list of nominees for the 2016 National Book Award (nonfiction category) announced today by the National Book Foundation. The five finalists will be announced Oct. 14. Below are the nominated books and authors, in alphabetical order, including excerpts and links from Washington Post reviews: Cynthia Barnett, “Rain: A Natural and Cultural History” […]

The faith, anger and chastening of David Gregory

HOW’S YOUR FAITH? An Unlikely Spiritual Journey By David Gregory Simon & Schuster. 276 pp. $26 Throughout his career with NBC News, David Gregory often came off as a bit of a peacock — arrogant, pushy, eager to put himself in the center of things. So when I learned that he had written a book, […]

The economy is rigged against you — and it’s kind of your fault

PHISHING FOR PHOOLS: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception By George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller Princeton University Press. 272 pp. $24.95 George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller are economics nobility. Both have won Nobel Prizes, Akerlof for explaining how “asymmetric information” between buyers and sellers distorts market outcomes, Shiller for his research […]

The 2012 campaign, through Ann Romney’s eyes

Ann Romney’s new memoir, “In This Together,” out this week, chronicles her battle with multiple sclerosis and the impact her illness has had on her life and family. She also goes behind the scenes of the 2012 presidential campaign, describing husband Mitt’s initial reluctance to run, and the real reason she cried when her husband […]

The book that will have everyone talking about how we never talk anymore

RECLAIMING CONVERSATION: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age By Sherry Turkle Penguin Press. 436 pp. $27.95 You’re at the dinner table, or in a meeting, or at a baseball game, or in the classroom, or in your bedroom, or at a bar or, yes, in the bathroom — and you’re on your phone. […]

Mary McGrory, the revolutionary insider of Washington journalism

MARY MCGRORY: The First Queen of Journalism By John Norris Viking. 342 pp. $28.95. The life of a political journalist can be tricky terrain for a biographer. It is not enough to capture the experiences of your protagonist; you must do justice to the events the journalist covered. This mix gets messy. How to avoid […]

The humbling of Jonah Lehrer, as told through a book jacket

Jonah Lehrer is back, though you’d barely realize it by his new book. The author of three bestsellers — “Proust Was a Neuroscientist” (2007), “How We Decide” (2009) and “Imagine: How Creativity Works” (2012) — Lehrer saw his reputation as a wunderkind science popularizer destroyed in 2012 when journalist Michael Moynihan revealed that Lehrer had […]

Will anyone ever run a marathon in less than two hours? It’s a matter of time.

TWO HOURS: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon By Ed Caesar Simon & Schuster. 242 pp. $26 Pitching a perfect game. Bowling 300. Winning the Triple Crown. There are markers in sports that embody excellence, the greatest possible achievement in a particular discipline. You can’t be more perfect on the mound than 27 up […]

Forget ghosts or zombies — nothing is scarier than what’s in your own mind

SCREAM: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear By Margee Kerr PublicAffairs. 274 pp. $26.99 Margee Kerr is a fear junkie. Roller coasters, haunted houses, heights, abandoned prisons, ghosts (well, maybe), even death — she confronts them with the relentlessness of a zombie Terminator. But she’s also a sociologist, and she has taken on the […]

Ben Carson, the humblebragging instrument of God

Ben Carson became convinced of two things during his teenage years. First, that he was uniquely talented, “one of the most spectacular and smartest people in the world.” Second, that God would answer his prayers, however specific they might be. Carson absorbed his mother’s mantra: “If you ask the Lord for something and believe He […]

11 times God intervened directly in Ben Carson’s life, according to Ben Carson

In his various autobiographical and self-help books, Ben Carson writes of occasions in which God helps him, protects him and looks out for him, sometimes unsolicited, usually in direct response to prayer. Carson, a neurosurgeon and the current front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, invokes his mother’s teaching — “If you ask […]

The opportunities and opportunism of George H.W. Bush

DESTINY AND POWER: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush By Jon Meacham Random House. 836 pp. $35. Jon Meacham’s biography of George Herbert Walker Bush pulls off a neat trick: It completes the historical rehabilitation of its subject by deepening, rather than upending, common perceptions of the 41st president. Yes, Bush lacked an […]

George H.W. Bush does a hilarious Bill Clinton impression

The relationship between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton has had its ups and downs — you know, your typical unease between rival American political dynasties. In his new biography of George H.W. Bush, “Destiny and Power,” Jon Meacham recounts this evolution, and includes a dead-on Bush impersonation of Clinton, combining his know-it-all smarts and […]

How to anticipate unthinkable terrorist attacks? Hire oddballs to think of them.

RED TEAM: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy By Micah Zenko Basic Books. 298 pp. $26.99 The terrorists come to shore at the South Street Seaport and scatter throughout Manhattan on foot and in cabs. They detonate bombs and shoot civilians in Grand Central Terminal; they take hostages at Macy’s in Herald Square. […]

How the American left fell in and out of love with Fidel Castro

FIGHTING OVER FIDEL: The New York Intellectuals and the Cuban Revolution By Rafael Rojas Princeton University Press. 312 pp. $35. One of the sharpest divides between political and intellectual life is that changing one’s mind is unforgivable in the former and inevitable in the latter. For politicians, consistency is prized; switching positions elicits the dread […]

The whiniest, funniest, creepiest and most memorable books of 2015

If you’re looking for the 10 best books of the year, or the 100 most notable titles of 2015, or the five tomes that explain the Islamic State, or the three books that go inside the struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, please go away. There are plenty of terrific lists out there […]

Inside the Republican battle for 2016, minus Donald Trump

THE WILDERNESS: Inside the Republican Party’s Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House By McKay Coppins Little Brown. 383 pp. $28 “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s classic portrait of six politicians seeking the presidency in 1988, was published four years after that race. “Game Change,” John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s smug, […]

The book every new American citizen — and every old one, too — should read

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis de Tocqueville (translated by Arthur Goldhammer) The Library of America. 941 pp. I picked a hell of a year to become an American. In late 2014, I rose to my feet in a Baltimore auditorium, alongside two dozen other immigrants from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, and swore an […]

Trump, Tocqueville and sex: the 10 book reviews you most liked to read in 2015

The most popular book reviews (measured by web traffic) that I wrote during my first year as The Washington Post’s nonfiction critic cover the timeless subjects we love to debate: politics, race, sex. . . and, of course, Donald Trump. Yes, two of my 10 most-viewed book reviews of 2015 focus on The Donald — and feature […]

Think you can spot a con artist? You probably just got duped.

THE CONFIDENCE GAME: Why We Fall for It. . . Every Time By Maria Konnikova Viking. 340 pp. $28. I was in New York’s Penn Station a few years ago, about to take an evening train to Washington, when a young woman approached me, flustered and rambling. “Please don’t walk away,” she pleaded. Her purse […]

The book that best explains Donald Trump’s appeal (and it’s not “The Art of the Deal”)

POLITICAL ANIMALS: How Our Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics By Rick Shenkman Basic Books. 302. $26.99 Now, I’m not going to come right out and accuse Rick Shenkman of slipping an early draft of his latest book to Donald Trump last summer. But I will say that “Political Animals” at times reads […]

Pope Francis wants to hear your confession

THE NAME OF GOD IS MERCY By Pope Francis (translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky) Random House. 151 pp. $26.99 In his nearly three years as the bishop of Rome, vicar of Christ, and heartthrob of disaffected Catholics and secular progressives everywhere, Pope Francis has been bedeviled by one question: How enduring and meaningful […]

Never have an affair with a memoir writer

WHY WE WRITE ABOUT OURSELVES: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) In the Name of Literature By Meredith Maran (editor) Plume. 272 pp. $16 You shouldn’t have affairs. But definitely don’t have one with a memoirist. That’s one of the few real conclusions I can draw from “Why We Write About Ourselves,” […]

Could you trade in your political beliefs for their exact opposite? These six people did.

EXIT RIGHT: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century By Daniel Oppenheimer Simon & Schuster. 403 pp. $28. Daniel Oppenheimer’s “Exit Right” is a flawed book, but it is flawed in the particular way that only great books can be. It fails to fully answer the impossibly ambitious questions it lays […]

Ted Cruz’s top foreign policy adviser has written a book. It’s about art history.

DAVID’S SLING: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art By Victoria C. Gardner Coates Encounter Books. 310 pp. $27.99 There are two ways to read Victoria C. Gardner Coates’s book “David’s Sling.” One is as the work of an art historian exploring the Western canon for sculptures, canvases and architecture that reflect or […]