In this excruciatingly honest autobiographical work, author Mehta conducts an exquisite exploration of his love life as a young man, attempting to focus an objective lens on the most subjective of Continue reading »
Imagine: you're a middle-aged adult and your elderly parent offers you a packet of love letters ("red letters") from an adulterous relationship that took place just before you were Continue reading »
Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing
Ved Mehta
A poignant tribute from a flawed but well-placed Boswell, Mehta's book revisits (through memories, letters and interviews) the career of William Shawn, who edited the New Yorker from 1951 to 1987. Continue reading »
In 1949, at age 15, Mehta left his native India to spend three years at the Arkansas School for the Blind. In this vivid memoir, written with great sensitivity and without self-pity, he describes the Continue reading »
This sixth volume of Mehta's lively, affecting autobiography covers his experiences at Pomona College, Calif., in the 1950s, when, despite his blindness, he tried to carry on the normal life of an Continue reading »
Mehta, the well-known Indian-born writer, affectionately relives his undergraduate years at Oxford's Balliol College in an amusing, wonderfully observant, self-deprecating memoir. Despite his Continue reading »
In a quietly devastating, gripping political chronicle based on his frequent trips to India between 1982 and 1994, Indian-born Mehta, a New Yorker staff writer, ruefully portrays a nation mired in Continue reading »
Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View
Edward McPherson
Guggenheim fellow McPherson (The History of the Future) presents a charming, idiosyncratic meditation on the human urge to see further, and more, in this cultural history of the Continue reading »
Japanese studies scholar Sheftall turns to the bombing of Nagasaki in this harrowing follow-up to Hiroshima. In his opening passages, Sheftall briefly surveys Nagasaki’s Continue reading »
Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur
Jeff Pearlman
Biographer Pearlman (The Last Folk Hero) chronicles the brief, chaotic life of rap legend Tupac Shakur in this excellent biography. Shakur was born in 1971 to mother Afeni, a Continue reading »
The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding
Joseph J Ellis
This incisive history from Pulitzer winner Ellis (American Sphinx) probes the contradiction between the Revolutionary era’s defense of universal rights and its complicity in Continue reading »