Japanese is an extraordinarily challenging language for foreigners to speak, let alone read, yet William Scott Wilson has demonstrated an amazing gift for translating classical Japanese works into English in a way that holds true to the... Read More

After the traumas of an abusive marriage, Janet Conner began spilling her emotional turmoil and fear onto the page. Conner came to experience an inner voice of wisdom answering her questions on the page, supporting her in facing her... Read More

Smith spent a long, stressful career buying and trading government debts in emerging nations. This “financial Indiana Jones,” as he was called by Forbes magazine, received death threats, placed his own life in jeopardy by trading in... Read More

“After working my way up from clerk to trader, combined with the advent of financial instruments known as index options, by age twenty-one I was a millionaire,” the author writes. Seldom since Jane Eyre’s quiet “Reader, I married... Read More

Schoonover tells a hilarious story: the Abwehr sought the best but in Heinz Lüning got the worst. It needed an agent in Havana: given naval routes and schedules, U-boats could wreak even greater havoc on ships carrying war materiel... Read More

Consider the indignities suffered by Marco Polo: a member of a wealthy family of Venetian traders in fabrics and spices, he traveled the winding Silk Road from the Mediterranean port of Ayas in Lesser Armenia through Iraq, Persia,... Read More

Politicians boast about spreading democracy. Armed forces clash. Civilians suffer and die. Pundits debate. Solutions are illusive. Another grand plan collapses into rubble. In the season of political change, many books have appeared with... Read More

Comic art has entered an unprecedented global upswing. If comics now signify art, then the wordless graphic novel has a claim on the highest art yet achieved. Perhaps the absence of dialogue impels the artist—a small number of artists... Read More