In past centuries some scientists mistakenly thought that everything important was already known. In The End of Discovery, physicist Russell Stannard persuasively argues that the cosmos contains more than we will ever know, so much that we are already approaching the barrier of human comprehension...

In the (admittedly small) thriller subgenre of historical European noir, two names dominate: Philip Kerr and Alan Furst. Bringing up the rear and not closing fast, if The Second Son (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is any evidence, is Jonathan Rabb. Of course, Rabb is something...

In Griftopia, Matt Taibbi rails at the culture of greed that submerged American society and led to the economic meltdown of 2008. He skewers a mob of malevolent figures, including CNBC’s Rick Santelli (“a half-baked PR stooge”) and the incompetent oracle of Wall Street, Alan Greenspan, tracing the insidious...

Perhaps no place on Earth is changing faster than China. And while today the country is viewed as an economic force, Americans seldom receive insight into the people behind the country’s financial boom. In Country Driving, named one of The Economist’s “Books of the Year,” U.S. reporter Peter Hessler...

Major Pettigrew is an archetypal British gentleman: staunchly reserved and properly mannered with a wry English wit (and, of course, a fond appreciation for tea). In Helen Simonson’s debut novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, this decorous title character finds himself unexpectedly courting a woman that the local community deems...

Baseball salvation was granted to our city in 1953, when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee and became an instant hit with the fans. The Milwaukee Braves soon astounded...

Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit From the Goon Squad falls in that range between brilliant and overreaching. The plot and narrative intricacies are as challenging as William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. She has a myriad of well-developed characters, and nearly each one gets a shot at his or her own chapter.

Joyce Carol Oates is probably more prolific than any prominent author in America. Not since Isaac Asimov has anyone written as much or as often, albeit Asimov’s resume included non-fiction in areas where he demonstrated no special authority and fiction mostly in the science-fiction genre, pounded out with interesting ideas but little literary polish...

Words influence our actions and beliefs; whether in printed publications or everyday conversations, language frames how we make sense of our environment. Woodland Pattern Book Center’s annual Poetry Marathon is a local celebration dedicated to promoting the literary community in Milwaukee and preserving the authenticity of the written and spoken word...

The Oneida weren¹t native to Wisconsin but became‹since their forced migration from New York in the early 19th century‹one of the region¹s prominent tribes. The essays that comprise A Nation Within a Nation explain that the Oneida have almost always been at the forefront of American Indian causes, often by simply...

In volume one of Clinton Heylin’s chronicle of a great artist, Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973, the author meticulously cataloged and analyzed Dylan’s canon for the first half of his career. With Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2006 (Chicago Review Press), he brings the subject almost up to date...

The story of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued tens of thousands of Jews in the last year of the Holocaust, has been told many times. What Alex Kershaw adds to the conversation are his own interviews with some of the people Wallenberg saved. Using his...

The origin of OK as a joke in a 1830s Boston newspaper has been pretty well established. MacMurray College English professor Allan Metcalf dwells instead on the meaning of OK—not just its variable usage as interjection or confirmation, noun, verb or adverb, but its wider significance as a word in common speech...

The Sentry, the impressive new thriller by Robert Crais, is the third in a series featuring the quiet, fearless ex-L.A.P.D. officer and mercenary Joe Pike. The Sentry uses a combination of first-person detective work, shockingly complex plotlines and powerful characters to capture readers right from the start...

Like his idols among the great Delta bluesmen, Keith Richards is intent on playing music until he dies. In fact, he may have cheated the Grim Reaper a few times already. Fittingly, Richards titled his autobiography Life (Little, Brown). Rock ’n’ roll was in its infancy in the early ’60s, and there were no templates...

The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians met every demand the United States imposed on them. They learned English, adopted Christianity and established farms and democratic institutions. And yet they were forced from New England and New York and finally to Wisconsin. With their command of English, they left...

Music magazines have come and gone, but Guitar World is among the survivors. The Complete History of Guitar World chronicles the publication’s 30-year run and anthologizes dozens of musician interviews—not all of them guitarists. While many of the conversations were gear head gabfests, some of the...

Every day a sea of Milwaukeeans passes by the 2300 block of South Lincoln Memorial Drive, the site of the Port of Milwaukee, but few city residents are aware of its rich history or its bustling...

For Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology was not merely the study of marginal, “primitive” societies, but also the road to discovering the deep laws of human life and nature itself. Patrick Wilcken’s biography is a fascinating and critical exploration of Lévi-Strauss and his world—a time and place when old...

Gypsy Rose Lee (1911-1970) was America’s most infamous woman—a shrewd, intelligent, sexually provocative Madonna of her day. It’s hard to come to grips with exactly why that was the case in Karen Abbott’s biography, a well-written re-creation of Lee’s life employing the novelist’s tools of inventing...

As a child in the ’60s, I knew that innovations and wonders abounded, and I had no doubt that at some point technology would ensure that cars would fly. While that dream never materialized...

British journalist Ed Vulliamy writes beautifully about the horror along the Mexican side of the border. The murderous sprees by rival drug cartels flash across the U.S. media from time to time, but receive little perspective. Vulliamy has lived on the border for years and pegs the conflict as postmodern war without...

Hipsterdom, a fascinating counterculture of 20- and 30-somethings that rose to distinction by its hatred of everything mainstream while remaining highly market-oriented...

For much of her life, architectural critic Jane Jacobs was seen as the leading figure in the movement to stop urban renewal efforts in cities around the world. Her classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is often seen as ground zero for the public campaign that...

Alexander Garvin’s thesis on the importance of public parks has wider implications about the value of defending the community, especially public spaces, against the encroachments of the windbags and greed jockeys who seek to privatize everything. Public parks were created in the 19th century to give poor and...