Maureen Corrigan

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947 – 1963, the newly published intimate ruminations of Susan Sontag.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark & Termite, a novel that weaves together the story of an American soldier fighting (and dying) in Korea in 1950, with that of his family struggling with their loss nine years later.

You know you have a terrific book in your hands when you encounter language or elegantly presented research that startles you into fresh awareness; you know it when the atmosphere of a novel doesn't leave you for days, or years.

This holiday season, as we stand at the brink of a new administration, there's a thrill of history in the air. These books will help anyone, whatever his or her politics, understand what the nation has come though to reach this moment.

Set in the 17th century, Toni Morrison's new novel A Mercy is the story of a slave girl whose mother gives her away to a stranger in a desperate attempt to secure her a better future. Maureen Corrigan hails the book as a prequel (of sorts) to Morrison's earlier novel Beloved.

From The Federalist Papers to The Feminine Mystique, Jay Parini's Promised Land examines 13 books that shaped and changed America. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Elizabeth McCracken's new memoir, An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination, details the devastating loss of the author's stillborn baby. Maureen Corrigan offers a review.

Radical bombers battle strikebreaking capitalists while Clarence Darrow squares off against the "American Sherlock Holmes" in this very popular history of a trial that mixed murder, politics and celebrity in 1910 Los Angeles.

An anti-social Goth gal-pal adds fun and a bracing feminist perspective to Stieg Larsson's witty, hard-boiled tale, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Brenda Wineapple's highly engaging biography White Heat examines the poet's enduring friendship with editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.