Books

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Interesting Women, the new collection of short stories by Andrea Lee.

Writer Michael Pollan. His book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World takes a look at four plants cultivated by humans: the apple, the tulip, potatoes and marijuana. Pollan demonstrates that plants and humans have developed a reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationship: do we plant potatoes, or do potatoes seduce us into planting them? Pollan questions the assumption that we are in charge of our agriculture. The book is now in paperback.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Emperor of Ocean Park (Knopf) by Stephen L. Carter.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Dive From the Clausens Pier (knopf) the debut novel by Ann Packer.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel Everything is Illuminated (Houghton Mifflin) by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Maria Rosa Menocal is a R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. She is also the author of the new book: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in Medieval Spain (Little, Brown). Menocal details Andalucia, Spain from 786 to 1492 where literature, science, and tolerance flourished.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Century's Son (Knopf) by Robert Boswell.

Journalist Laura Blumenfeld is the author of the book, Revenge: A Story of Hope (Simon & Schuster). In 1986 her father was shot while visiting Israel. The bullet grazed his head. Ten years later, while a reporter for The Washington Post, Blumenfeld went in search of the shooter as a way to deal with her own feelings of revenge. She found his family who in turn led her to him. She developed a friendship with them, before they knew who she really was.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Nanny Diaries (St. Martins Press) by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Atonement (Doubleday) the new novel by Ian McEwan.