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Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
Like his hero, Orwell, Christopher prized bravery above all other qualities--and in particular the bravery required for unflinching honesty
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Jesse Frohman/Corbis Outline The Greatest Gossip
Plus a history of the Bank of England
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Books of the Year 2011
The Atlantic’s literary editor picks the five best of the crop.
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Topham/The Image Works Police and Poetry
New York's crime drop; T. S. Eliot's dark days
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Great American Cynic
Ambrose Bierce’s astringent prose style reflects the severity of his vision.
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James L. Amos/National Geographic Stock Bitter Crossing
A new history vividly describes the agony and uncertainty of the journey west by America’s pioneers.
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Lindsay / Flickr My Ramona
Beverly Cleary’s body of work shows why topicality derails great literature.
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Andrew Schwartz/HBO The Great Los Angeles Novel
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.
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Edmund De Waal A Remembrance of Things
A new memoir uses an exquisite collection of figurines to evoke one family's devastating history.
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1998 Judith Bromley/Courtesy Richard Nickel Committee 2010; The Architect of the City
Louis Sullivan, the author of the modernist skyline, is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
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Books of the Year
Fifteen additional picks
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Books of the Year 2010
Benjamin Schwarz picks the five best of the crop.
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Jacob Thomas The American Critic
H. L. Mencken trained American intellectuals in what to like—and how to rebel.
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Carter Smith/Art + Commerce Prep Is Dead, Long Live Prep
How a subculture gained the world and lost its soul
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Alex Williamson The Racket
How the numbers game shaped Harlem
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The Not-So-Second City
Chicago is the finest architectural city in the United States, Benjamin Schwarz writes. But the story includes a rueful note.
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Sam Falk/New York Times Co./Getty Images Gentrification and Its Discontents
Manhattan never was what we think it was.
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Steve Bonini/IPN/Aurora Photos Play’s the Thing
A new book argues that play may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains.
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John Chillingworth/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Intimate History
A grand history and an elegiac new film explore Britain’s recent, and irrecoverable, past.
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A Very British Glamour
Louise Baring's new book focuses on fashion photographer Norman Parkinson, who captured the charm, wit, and intelligence of feminine beauty
