Books of the Year 2011
The Atlantic’s literary editor picks the five best of the crop.
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Benjamin Schwarz is the former literary and national editor for The Atlantic. He is writing a book about Winston Churchill for Random House. More
His first piece for the magazine, "The Diversity Myth," was a cover story in 1995. Since then he's written articles and reviews on a startling array of subjects from fashion to the American South, from current fiction to the Victorian family, and from international economics to Chinese restaurants. Schwarz oversees and writes a monthly column for "Books and Critics," the magazine's cultural department, which under his editorship has expanded its coverage to include popular culture and manners and mores, as well as books and ideas. He also regularly writes the "leader" for the magazine. Before joining the Atlantic's staff, Schwarz was the executive editor of World Policy Journal, where his chief mission was to bolster the coverage of cultural issues, international economics, and military affairs. For several years he was a foreign policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he researched and wrote on American global strategy, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and military doctrine. Schwarz was also staff member of the Brookings Institution. Born in 1963, he holds a B.A. and an M.A. in history from Yale, and was a Fulbright scholar at Oxford. He has written for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, and The Nation. He has lectured at a range of institutions, from the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School to the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History. He won the 1999 National Book Critics Circle award for excellence in book criticism.
A new history vividly describes the agony and uncertainty of the journey west by America’s pioneers.
HBO’s Mildred Pierce is based on James M. Cain’s book that has to go down as one of the great failures of American fiction.
Louis Sullivan, the author of the modernist skyline, is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
A new memoir uses an exquisite collection of figurines to evoke one family's devastating history.
A new book argues that play may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains.
A grand history and an elegiac new film explore Britain’s recent, and irrecoverable, past.
Louise Baring's new book focuses on fashion photographer Norman Parkinson, who captured the charm, wit, and intelligence of feminine beauty More »
