#book-review

#book-review

This week, we went inside a courtroom where Donald Trump was indicted, again; met a man who couldn't give up his pet rats; and found joy in running Slow AF.Welcome to your weekly newsletter from New York Times Audio, where app editors share their favorite listens.If you haven't already, download the New York Times Audio app to hear these stories.

It is a fallacy to think we protect children from the world around them, Todd Brewster writes in AMERICAN CHILDHOOD: A Photographic History (Scribner, $36).Children suffered from slavery and racism, from the deprivation of the Great Depression.They marched during the civil rights movement and witnessed the attacks on Sept. 11.

Rome, 1950: The diary begins innocently enough, with the name of its owner, Valeria Cossati, written in a neat script.Valeria is buying cigarettes for her husband when she is entranced by the stacks of gleaming black notebooks at the tobacco shop.She's not permitted to buy one there on Sundays, she's told, but the tobacconist gives her one anyway, which she stashes under her coat.

Naomi Ackie in "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody."(Emily Aragones/Sony Pictures/AP) StarOutline StarOutline (1.5 stars) "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody," director Kasi Lemmons's frustratingly one-note biopic about the pop songstress, who died in 2012 at age 48, suffers from an egregiously ironic musical sin: It's all hooks and no bridges.

As the season of holiday meal preparation approaches, here's an interesting thought experiment: Could you write a cookbook with your family?For most of us, the answer is a resounding no, for reasons involving logistics, talent and temperament.The Leung family is an exception.They not only have teamed up to produce a cookbook, The Woks of Life  a colorful, uncomplicated guide to preparing Chinese meals, inspired by their blog by the same name  but even have a best seller on their hands.

The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's remarkable, large-scale images offer a painterly view of man-made infrastructure around the world, from quarries in Portugal to rice fields in China to oil refineries in California.His new book, AFRICAN STUDIES (Steidl, $95), focuses on a region he calls globalism's final stop: sub-Saharan Africa.

I have choked it down and I know, Ernest Cole (1940-1990) writes of the barely edible porridge fed to Black South Africans in hospitals and jails alike; but the phrase looms over HOUSE OF BONDAGE (Aperture, $65), his 1967 account of the atrocities of apartheid.The book has been out of print until now.

It should come as no surprise that writers and editors at the Book Review do a lot of outside reading and, even among ourselves, we like to discuss the books that are on our minds.On this week's episode, Gilbert Cruz talks to the critic Jennifer Szalai and the editors Sadie Stein and Joumana Khatib about what they've been reading (and in some cases listening to) recently.

George Ogilvie's moody song Grave sets the tone for the creepy opening page of Trang Thanh Tran's debut novel, She Is a Haunting, which floated into the world on Feb. 28 and landed at No. 4 on the young adult hardcover list.The house eats and is eaten, writes Tran, a cancer survivor and former data analyst who uses they/she pronouns.

Patti Smith's latest book, A Book of Days, rests in your hand like a box of high-end chocolates  pleasingly weighty, promising elegance and class alongside a touch of the bittersweet.Somehow it's not surprising that, after a casual shot of the author herself, the first picture in Smith's collection is of her own palm, fingers at attention, as if waving hello.

Image Lezende jongen, by Frans Hals Molly Young is on leave for the next several months.In her absence, colleagues from the Book Review will pick up the recommendation torch and appear in your inbox every two Saturdays.Dear readers, As a child, I always liked Valentine's Day.My mom would leave a valentine by our cereal bowls, and sometimes a little heart candy, too.

At a time when public libraries and librarians are facing budget headwinds and sometimes intense political scrutiny for the roles they play in their communities, the Times photo editor Erica Ackerberg last fall dispatched photographers to seven libraries in cities, suburbs and rural areas across the country to document what daily life in those public institutions really looks like in today's world.

Chernobyl Prayer: A Book Review - Hannah Cowne, St Philomena's School (Image: Hannah Cowne) Recommended to me by a teacher, I found Chernobyl Prayer', by Svetlana Alexievich, to be an incredibly profound and insightful book.The book contains many monologues, or interviews, of different individuals who had some form of attachment to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

All her fault- A book review by Molly kendall Tolworth Girls School (Image: Molly Kendall) Do you enjoy a thrilling read?Perhaps, a book that will have your heart hammering in your chest, the entire time?A book that you will be glued to until the very last page?If so, I higly recommend All her fault, by Andrea Mara.

Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan), left, and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) are New York Times reporters investigating film producer Harvey Weinstein in "She Said," directed by Maria Schrader.(JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)(3.5 stars) The broad factual contours of the story related in "She Said" are well known: In 2017, New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor published an explosive series of articles about film producer Harvey Weinstein, raising credible allegations that he engaged in serial sexual abuse and assault of actresses and employees over decades.