- Books: “Colonel Roosevelt.”
8220;He is a great big boy,” Woodrow Wilson said, in 1914, of Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had defeated for President. “You can’t resist the man.” Roosevelt had just returned from an Amazon expedition, and his appearance suggested that he might finally be done. He . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Colonel Roosevelt.”
8220;He is a great big boy,” Woodrow Wilson said, in 1914, of Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had defeated for President. “You can’t resist the man.” Roosevelt had just returned from an Amazon expedition, and his appearance suggested that he might finally be done. He . . . (Subscription required.)...
- John Lahr: “Seminar” and “Private Lives” reviews.
Alan Rickman is the go-to actor for supercilious. Over the years, in screen roles as various as the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” Colonel Brandon in “Sense and Sensibility,” Hans Gruber in “Die Hard,” and Severus Snape in the . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “The Last Stand.”
On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer looked down through binoculars at an immense Indian village on the Little Bighorn River. All he saw were women and children; the men seemed to be away. “Hurrah, boys, we’ve got them!” he shouted. “We’ll . . ....
- Books: “Young Romantics.”
Hay examines the “turbulent communal existence” of the English Romantic poets, astutely parsing the intricate circumstances that led to this network’s distinctive creative output; she shows, for instance, that “Frankenstein” emerged not merely out of fireside “conversations about ghosts and galvanism” but . . ....
- Books: “Feeding on Dreams” review.
This latest memoir by the Chilean-American author and former Allende adviser resumes the tale of his countless “dislocations” since fleeing Chile, in 1973. Dorfman shuttles among three continents and two languages, adrift in “an eternal victimhood of regret.” The resulting “wrath” may help . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Instead of a Letter.”
Athill, now ninety-two years old, won admiration here for her recent memoirs “Stet” and “Somewhere Towards the End,” but this book, one of two earlier memoirs that have now been reissued, shows that her talent has been evident for decades. Supple, frank, unafraid of contradictions . . ....
- Books: “American Uprising.”
In January, 1811, hundreds of slaves from the sugar fields on Louisiana’s German Coast banded together and marched toward New Orleans, carrying out what Rasmussen identifies as the “largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States.” He places the revolt . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Anthony Lane: “Nine,” “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” “The Young Victoria,” and “A Single Man.”
The beginning of “Nine” feels like an end. The first words we hear are “You kill your film,” uttered at a press conference by an Italian movie director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis). We then find him at the Cinecittà film studios, in Rome . . ....
- Books: “Verdi’s Shakespeare” review.
In the essays collected here, Wills examines how Verdi—who, though he did not read English, “adored Shakespeare”—composed and staged “Macbeth,” “Otello,” and “Falstaff,” all “solid masterpieces,” and the latter two “arguably the greatest things he . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: Art
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Velázquez Rediscovered.” Through Feb. 7. | “The ‘Young Archer,’ Attributed to Michelangelo.” Ongoing. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “American . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Art
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Velázquez Rediscovered.” Through Feb. 7. | “The ‘Young Archer,’ Attributed to Michelangelo.” Ongoing. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “American . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Art
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Velázquez Rediscovered.” Through Feb. 7. | “The ‘Young Archer,’ Attributed to Michelangelo.” Ongoing. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “American . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Art
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Velázquez Rediscovered.” Through Feb. 7. | “The ‘Young Archer,’ Attributed to Michelangelo.” Ongoing. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “American . . ....
- Books: “O.”
8220;You ever wonder why stories like yours get buzz?” Cal Regan, a handsome young campaign manager for O, asks Maddy Cohan, a beautiful young reporter. The answer, he volunteers, is that “you imprinted a stupid Hollywood psychodrama on the race when there are no facts to support . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “O.”
8220;You ever wonder why stories like yours get buzz?” Cal Regan, a handsome young campaign manager for O, asks Maddy Cohan, a beautiful young reporter. The answer, he volunteers, is that “you imprinted a stupid Hollywood psychodrama on the race when there are no facts to support . . . (Subscription required.)...
- David Denby: “The American,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Hideaway.”
In “The American,” a professional assassin (George Clooney) known as Jack, and sometimes as Edward, and sometimes not as anyone, enters a medieval hilltop town in the Abruzzo region of Italy and tries to lie low. In his wariness and his silence, Jack resembles those mysterious gunmen who . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Why do people love Stieg Larsson’s novels?
Having got American readers to buy more than fourteen million copies, collectively, of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy books—“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2008, American edition), “The Girl Who Played with Fire” (2009), and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’ . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “Robin Hood.”
What do you get if you mix “Gladiator,” “The Return of Martin Guerre,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Elizabeth,” “Troy,” “The Seventh Seal,” and a hundred buckets of mud? The answer is “Robin Hood”—the latest version . . ....
- Anthony Lane: “The Future,” “Another Earth,” and “Cowboys & Aliens.”
To call a movie “The Future” is, if you think about it, inspired. In any city where the film is playing, people will say to one another, “Have you seen ‘The Future’? ” If the title is doomed to cause misunderstanding, that is part of . . ....
- Books: “Three Stages of Amazement.”
Edgarian’s second novel follows an idealistic couple who want their marriage to be “a flexible, romantic sort of agreement” but find that it has become “a mousetrap.” Lena used to be a “nail-the-bastards” radio producer; now she cares for two . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Three Stages of Amazement.”
Edgarian’s second novel follows an idealistic couple who want their marriage to be “a flexible, romantic sort of agreement” but find that it has become “a mousetrap.” Lena used to be a “nail-the-bastards” radio producer; now she cares for two . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “Blood’s a Rover”
The final novel of Ellroy’s “Underworld U.S.A.” trilogy, following “American Tabloid” and “The Cold Six Thousand,” is a fittingly crazed and violent account of the years 1968 to 1972. Alternating chapters follow three henchmen with ties to a labyrinth of interconnected schemes . . ....
- Books: “The American Civil War”
This military history finds that our “second revolution” was an improvised and desultory affair, a function largely of the vastness and the variety of nineteenth-century American terrain. It anticipated the First World War, in that it was a “body-count war,” with bloody and inconclusive . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Art
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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Vermeer’s Masterpiece ‘The Milkmaid.’” Through Nov. 29. | “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans.’” Through Jan. 3. | “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915.” . . ....
- Richard Brody: Alexander Kluge’s “Yesterday Girl,” and Werner Schroeter’s “Palermo or Wolfsburg.”
paragraph class="noindent">In 1962, inspired by the French New Wave, a group of West German filmmakers issued the Oberhausen Manifesto, which called for “the new German feature film.” In 1966, with his first feature, “Yesterday Girl” (Facets), Alexander Kluge (one of the signatories) borrowed the . . ....
- Books: Victor Cha’s “The Impossible State” review.
8220;Industrialized,” “urbanized,” and “high tech” are not words one typically associates with North Korea. Yet, in the wake of the Second World War, as China and the U.S.S.R. vied for influence in the Korean peninsula, it was just that. Since then, political paranoia, economic . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “No Such Thing as Silence.”
In this concise survey, Gann, a composer and music critic, examines John Cage’s famously noteless composition “4′33″” from origins to afterlife. He lucidly catalogues the “specifically American mix” of influences—Duchamp, Zen, Erik Satie, Thoreau, Robert Rauschenberg—that fed . . ....
