Book Reviews

A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.

Books that both animal lovers and their equine companions can enjoy.

In “This Little Art,” Kate Briggs, a translator of Roland Barthes, ponders the challenges and mysteries of rendering an author’s words in a foreign language.

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, has written “Yes We (Still) Can,” a memoir of his years in the White House, with prescriptions for the future.

Ottessa Moshfegh, author most recently of the novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” would invite Edith Wharton, Ralph Ellison and Charles Bukowski to dinner: “I’d ... want to know what it’s like to be dead, and whether writing great books has earned them any merit in the afterlife.”

Publishers are churning out picture books of pop music lyrics. But a good song and a good book may be two different animals.

The all-time, best-selling nonfiction book in Australia is, somewhat surprisingly, a personal finance guide. And its 39-year-old author, Scott Pape, is a national celebrity.

David E. Sanger talks about “The Perfect Weapon,” and Stacy Horn discusses “Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York.”

In Harriet Alida Lye’s “The Honey Farm,” creative individuals hail from all walks of life to take part in an eerie bee colony-slash-cult.

A bighearted toad, a cool fox, a daredevil younger sister and other larger-than-life characters fill these very short story collections.

The typewritten page, bearing the influential feminist thinker’s intimate thoughts and revisions, reveals the inner workings of an avant-garde mind.

In the past you rarely knew where your favorite writers stood on political and social issues. That’s changed.

Rather than becoming partisan instruments of any president, American soldiers have more reason than ever to heed Huntington’s call to neutral public service.

Six new paperbacks to check out this week.

In which we consult the Book Review’s past to shed light on the books of the present. This week: Patrick Chamoiseau’s “Solibo Magnificent.”

Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

In “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,” a new essay collection, the author of “The Queen of the Night” argues that writing fiction involves allowing yourself to become someone else.

In “Damnation Island,” Stacy Horn traces the appalling history of the East River institutions where 19th-century New York exiled its undesirables.

Reading Stephen Wolf‘s combined guidebook and autobiography of his time spent in Manhattan’s largest green space is the next best thing to being there.