CHASTITY OH NO

By MAGGIE GALLAGHER

Pity poor Dagmar Herzog. "This book was an agony to write," she tells us. Dutifully, as part of her high calling as a sexual historian and professor of same at New York University, she...more >

A SELECTION

Stuff white people like, according to "Stuff White People Like" (Random House): Film festivals, yoga, gifted children, snowboarding, expensive sandwiches. Also: Plaid, music piracy, beards...more >

By BILLY HELLER

Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) The Pulitzer-winning author of "Lonesome Dove," "The Last Picture Show" and 26 other novels is a renowned book collector...more >

THE PETERS PRINCIPLE

By FREDERICK J. CHIAVENTONE

Retired Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters lives by a creed: To seek what "no academic texts or intelligence documents can give you: the scent of daily life, the temper of the people, the...more >

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 JOKES

By MICHAEL WEISS

Here's a race only two idle TV writers could devise: Start at the same point (in this case Los Angeles), travel in opposite directions, traverse every line of longitude on the globe, amass a few...more >

SWAMP THING

By NEIL GRAVES

Shady land deals, cost overruns, arguments over design - long before Ground Zero, there was Washington, D.C. This Independence Day, it may be comforting to know some things never change. As this...more >

TWO TO TANGO

By SUSAN KONIG

Betty Friedan called it "the problem that has no name" - that feeling of married life as meaningless, women sublimating themselves for the betterment of their families. The wife's plea...more >

THE BANNER THAT INSPIRED THE NATIONAL ANTHEM, RESTORED TO GLORY

By ERIN GILLESPIE

June 29, 2008 - Oh, say can you see? It's the original Star Spangled Banner - ready to be unfurled again after a decade-long restoration project. Flag Photo Gallery It was a clear autumn morning on...more >

NEW NEIGHBORS, AND SUDDENLY THE CITY CARES ABOUT HARLEM

By JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN

June 29, 2008 - You have to admire the guts of buying and renovating a townhouse in 2000 in West Harlem, even if the storytelling in "Home Girl" is cheerful to the point of provocation. Looking at "...more >

ALL ABOUT NAIVE

By GORDON CUCULLU

June 29, 2008 - Mahvish Rukhsana Kahn, daughter of Afghan immigrants, became concerned about Guantanamo's detention center in 2005 while a student at University of Miami's law school. In her view "US...more >

June 29, 2008 - You wouldn't suspect it from watching her strident (some might say shrill) performance in "Will and Grace" - let alone "Young Frankenstein," where she sings up a storm - but...more >

BIG DREAMS (SMALLER RESULTS)

By SAM MUNSON

June 29, 2008 - Ethan Canin's new novel, "America, America," is about power and ambition: of Henry Bonwiller, a Senator whose life and troubles borrow a great deal from those of Ted Kennedy (both are...more >

WHEN IN ROME ...

By ROBERT A. GEORGE

June 29, 2008 - "The world is stirring not only politically," Arthur Daley of the Times noted. "It is stirring athletically, too. Nations that weren't in existence at the time of the Melbourne...more >

By BILLY HELLER

June 29, 2008 - The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell (Pantheon) In celebration of the centennial of the fabled New Yorker reporter's birth, his classic collection from 50 years ago is being re-released...more >

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

By GABRIELLE DANCHICK

June 29, 2008 - Thought they cleaned up Central Park, rid it of violence? Think again. Predators hunt, conspirators whisper, masked-bandits steal. Marie Winn uncovers it all in "Central Park in the Dark,"...more >

SCROUNGING FOR A TASTE OF WEALTH IN THE GASTRODOMES

By MICHAEL McHALE

June 22, 2008 - The Man Who Ate the World In Search of the Perfect Dinner by Jay Raynor Henry Holt Told by his mother to either eat the slimy slab of mackerel in front of him or leave the table, six-year-old...more >

By MARC SIEGEL

June 22, 2008 - The Spirit of the Place by Samuel Shem Kent State University Press In the late 1970s, Samuel Shem penned a groundbreaking satire, "The House of God," exposing the growing dehumanization...more >