With these two books of translated sonnets one under its own label and one through a subsidiary Farrar Straus and Giroux tightens its claim to a place on the top rung of literary publishers The sonnet is about as much in vogue these days as the gavotte but we have to admire the great practition

In this richly documented and thoroughly engaging memoir Joseph A Califano Jr recalls his years in Washington as a member of several administrations and as a partner in a powerful law firm From this vantage point Califano observed and participated in the national crises and unsettling cultural c

While Ronald Reagan tagged Democrats with his tax and spend label it was his 1980 electoral adversary Jimmy Carter who while governing Georgia in the 1970 rsquo s pioneered zero-based budgeting in government the system by which each program rsquo s very existence must be justified every time spe

If Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka are arguably the grandfathers of Nigerian literature and Ben Okri and Buchi Emecheta are their successors Chris Abani Chimamanda Adichie and Helen Habila would appear to be coming into their own these days as the next wave Adichie author of Purple Hibiscus Alg

The dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration Joseph S Nye Jr coined the term ldquo soft power rdquo in the late 1980 rsquo s In Bound to Lead 1990 and The Paradox of American Power 2001 he developed the

Reading American Jesus I longed to teach again a course I regularly used to offer on American culture and religion This would definitely be a required text It is a spritely sometimes ironic truly illuminating overview of Jesus as a national icon within and outside the organized churches Steph