Books of the Times: Down the Halls of a Wonder House, the Mirrors Cracked
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Among other things, âHouse of Happy Endingsâ evokes the sunny simplicity of small-town postwar America, and a bright young girlâs exploration of her small world.
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IN âA Nation of Counterfeitersâ (Harvard University Press, $29.95), Stephen Mihm takes us back to the screwball days between the American Revolution and the Civil War, when the dollar did not exist.
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If the children of the Green Mountains who vandalized a farmhouse once owned by Robert Frost knew of its history, then shame. If they did not know, then shame still.
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Paris' newly renovated Decorative Arts Museum is a dollhouse on a grand scale, where each room offers up treasures: Napoleon's golden throne, fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin's purple boudoir, the velvet-draped bed of a 19th-century courtesan.
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It's not a deep, dark cave inhabited by  Gollum, nor a hall of stone belonging to a Dwarf-lord -- it's  just an ordinary house in the heart of England's suburbia.
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"House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes" (Currency, 272 pages, $24.95), by Daniel McGinn: Despite the nation's housing slump, Americans love homes.
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A new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author, describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
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MSU librarians considered it a feat a few years ago when they managed to get dozens of centuries-old cookbooks online. So folks there were a bit stunned by the news that the
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1. "The Grim Grotto" by Lemony Snicket
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Silver buckled shoes, stockings and a ceremonial sword? Time, some say, for Parliament's archaic security measures to be dragged into the 21st century after what was called the worst security breach at the House of Commons since 1642.
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By MARY-LIZ SHAW  ON THE SHELVES  How to Cheat at Cleaning. By Jeff Bredenberg. Taunton Press. $12.95.
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The truth about Harry Potter and reading is not quite a straightforward success story.
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Arts & entertainment: Guardian Books poll into era-defining books finds that paranoia, propaganda and a state of perpetual war are the defining characteristics of the last century.
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The last century, through its great cataclysms, offers two clear, ringing, and, unfortunately, contradictory lessons.
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The intense bibliographic appeal of âPeople of the Bookâ turns out to be a mixed blessing.
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Lou Yeâs âSummer Palaceâ examines youthful idealism and its unhappy aftermath.
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"An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England" (Algonquin, 320 pages. $24.95), by Brock Clarke: America lives in the age of the memoir and the confessional. It's the defining literary legacy of our time, much as insanely long novels marked the Victorian Age.