Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Charles Pellegrino’s The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back, a grim reexamination of the first wartime use of the atomic bomb, relies extensively on first-person accounts. Unfortunately, according to the New York Times (“Doubts Raised on Book’s Tale of Atom Bomb,” by William J. Broad), one section of the book relies on the [...]

The noble black woman servant who saves the dysfunctional white family is an iconic figure in American culture. It often brings to mind the 1988 movie Clara’s Heart, starring Whoopi Goldberg, with Kathleen Quinlan as the affluent but neglectful mother and Neil Patrick Harris as the emotionally needy son. What I really love about this [...]

And the finalists are: Biography The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, by Kirstin Downey    Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, by Linda Gordon   Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic, by Michael Scammell   Louis D. [...]

Three books are in line to receive the $50,000 Washington Book Prize: Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, by Richard Beeman The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, by R.B. Bernstein  Abigail & John: Portrait of A Marriage, by Edith B. Gelles The winner will be announced May 20th.

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America  have announced their Nebula finalists in six categories. For novels, the nominees are: The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi   The Love We Share Without Knowing, by Christopher Barzak Flesh and Fire, by Laura Anne Gilman The City & The City, by China Miéville Boneshaker, by Cherie [...]

You’ve got to hand it to Quirk Classics. The publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters may be riding their one-trick pony into the ground, but they’re doing it with style. Bloggers, this one included, seem constitutionally incapable of not linking to every new development, from the announcement of the newest [...]

While agents and authors cheer Macmillan’s stand against Amazon, some e-book aficionados are angry at authors. In an anecdote-rich but fact-impoverished article in the New York Times, Motoko Rich and Brad Stone quote a bunch of people who are willing to pay a few hundred books for a gizmo — but balk at a few [...]

Editor’s note: Connie Fletcher has been reviewing mysteries for Booklist for more than 30 years, including many titles by Dick Francis. The day before Dick Francis died, I was in my local bookstore, The Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois,  and was stopped in my browsing tracks by a tiny display someone had taped to a [...]

Messages began to accumulate like snow online over the weekend as the chilling news of poet Lucille Clifton’s death began to travel from one poetry lover to another. I feel bereft as so many others do because Clifton was the sort of poet who spoke to everyone about everything that matters with unfailing clarity, conviction, and [...]

I finally made time to read Jonathan Mahler’s profile of James Patterson (“James Patterson Inc.” New York Times) — since it was published, two weeks ago, Patterson has already written three more books and signed a contract to publish 38 more. I kid, I kid. But, certainly, this profile of the prolific Patterson’s powerful publishing [...]