In France in the 1950s and ‘60s when you bought a book, you often had to cut the pages. Books consisted of a number of fascicules, or folders of pages, sewn and glued into the binding, with only the ...

One late evening in December, 1985, I heard a radio talk-show host announce “a great loss: Robert Graves is dead.” It came as a shock, even though I had been hearing rumors for some time that the ...

The conceit of this column is simple: I write about books I’m reading. New, old, obscure, overrated — whatever’s on the nightstand is fair game. So while most weeks are devoted to new releases or ...