From The New York Review of Books, a review of We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction by Joan Didion; Double-Cross in the Congo: A review of The Mission Song by John le Carré; a review of Collected Stories by Roald Dahl; and a review of The Collected Poems, 1956–1998 by Zbigniew Herbert.

From Identity Theory, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford talks with Robert Birnbaum about his latest (and last) Frank Bascombe novel, The Lay of the Land; Donald Hall, Poet Laureate of the United States, talks at length with Robert Birnbaum about baseball, his relationship with Robert Frost, the cultural importance of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," writing about loss, and why song lyrics don't make good poems; and Elizabeth Benedict, author of The Practice of Deceit, talks with Robert Birnbaum about

… full text available to registered users