Book Reviews

Blair Curses, Brown Rages in Damning Political Portrait: Books As a U.K. general election nears, London newspapers are serving up juicy morsels from a scabrous new book on politics. The extracts, from Andrew Rawnsley’s “The End of the Party,” brim with men behaving badly behind the walls of the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street.

Top Five Nonfiction Books From Conover to Rove: the Muse List With so many books in the stores, we’re often asked for recommendations. Here’s a list of recent nonfiction titles:

Rove Throws Meat to Right-Wingers in Pugilistic Memoir: Review What to make of a memoir called “Courage and Consequence”? That’s the title of Karl Rove’s new volume, and the bookstore browser might easily conclude that the courage and consequence Rove refers to are his own.

Amis Grapples With Topless Beauties, Sexual Revolution: Books The sexual revolution was far from bloodless. So insists Martin Amis in “The Pregnant Widow,” a comedy of bedroom manners as trenchant as it is bawdy.

Mithradates Poisoned Mom, Wed Sis, Blitzed Rome: Lewis Lapham A comet lit up the sky at the conception of Mithradates in 135 B.C., heralding the birth of a great savior-king. But when his mother, Queen Laodice, poisoned his father so she could sit alone on the throne of Pontus, a worried little Mithradates fled the capital with a small band of teenage friends.

Blair’s Memoirs to Be Published in September, Random House Says Tony Blair’s memoirs will be published in September, the head of Random House Group said today.

Wall Street Had ‘No Idea’ What Subprime CDSs Were, Lewis Writes Michael Burry, the California hedge-fund manager who figured out how to bet against the subprime bubble, prodded seven Wall Street banks in early 2005 to create credit-default swaps for subprime-mortgage bonds, Michael Lewis writes in his book, “The Big Short.”

Consider Pleasures of Goat Herding, Cheese: Manuela Hoelterhoff Brad Kessler wanted to see fewer people and more trees, as he tells us at the start of his splendid “Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese.”