Patrick Reardon

Andre Norton’s 1961 novel Catseye is what’s often called a space opera. In other words, like the old Westerns — called horse operas — it’s an adventure story, set in [...]

It was in 1962 that P.D. James published Cover Her Face, her first murder mystery featuring Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard. At the time, Agatha Christie was still [...]

For 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, life in Chicago in early 1939 is one of fear and anger. On this day, he has just beaten up his friend Gus for no apparent [...]

The cover of One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia indicates that this is a book for kids 9 to 12. And, sure, the reading level will fit that group of [...]

Make no mistake: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was a refounding of the United States. A redefinition of the nation — a revolution, if you will. It was the substitution of [...]

In addition to the groups of books I highlighted on Tuesday, I wanted to honor the nine individual books that I read in 2017. These were books that left an [...]

Looking back over the 60-plus books I read in 2017, I am struck by how many of the best — 19 to be exact — fall into groups that comprise [...]

There’s no indication in Elmore Leonard’s 1993 crime novel Pronto what the title is supposed to mean. In American English, “pronto” is an adverb, meaning “quickly.” It comes from Spanish [...]

Well, what is fashion? In Fashion, a carefully calibrated look at Western couture over the past 200 years, Christopher Breward notes that fashion can be viewed “as art, social process, [...]

Published in 1996, Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc, edited by Bonnie Wheeler and Charles T. Wood, is a collection of eighteen scholarly essays looking at various aspects of the [...]