Books

Book critic John Leonard reviews Thank God for the Atom Bomb, a new book of essays by University of Pennsylvania professor Paul Fussell.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg examines the idioms of Berkeley, California, one of the most liberal and tolerant communities in America.

Writer Orville Schell. His latest book, Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform, chronicles one year in China's rush toward Democracy, and the country's continuing love-hate relationship with the West. Schell's work appears regularly in The New Yorker.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Dream Time by poet and literary critic Geoffrey O'Brien. The book is a meditation on the turbulence of the sixties.

Book critic John Leonard reviews the novel Children of the Arbat, by the Russian writer Anatoly Rybakov.

Writer and actress Lulla Rosenfeld. She's written a book on Yiddish Theatre and her grandfather, Jacob Adler, one of its most renowned actors.

Susan Baur, author of Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings, a book that examines how hypochondria develops, how hypochondriacs stay that way, and how they have been viewed over time.

New York Times television critic Peter Boyer. His new book, Who Killed CBS? The Undoing of America's Number One News Network, explores the recent turmoil within the news division of CBS, and how it has effected the entire corporation. He reports on the ill-fated reign of CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, the tenure of Dan Rather as anchor of the CBS Evening News and the takeover of CBS by New York investor Laurence Tisch.

Book critic John Leonard reviews The New Confessions, a novel by the British writer William Boyd. Boyd's earlier novels include Stars and Bars and An Ice Cream War.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Quinn's Book, the new novel by William Kennedy.