Books

Dhiraj Kumar's 'The Asocial Networking' examines the gap between the curated selves we post and the people we are in our living rooms.

Guest review of Khushwant Singh's 1956 Partition classic: Mano Majra, the doomed love of Juggut Singh and Nooran, and why this slim novel still haunts.

In 2012 the full Hogwarts castle model — hand-sculpted, 1:24 scale, filmed in every Harry Potter movie — went public at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour.

J.K. Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was announced in 2012. The trap only a billion-copy author faces: every new book is a referendum.

A reader review of Khorshed Bhavnagri The Laws of the Spirit World, the automatic-writing book born of the tragic 1980 loss of her sons Vispi and Ratoo.

Psychologist James Pennebaker's 2011 book The Secret Life of Pronouns: what twenty years of text analysis reveal about the hidden inner life of tiny words.

Reader review of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha: an enchanting, emotional journey from 1929 Japan through the postwar years into the world of geishas.

Parental expectations are among the strongest predictors of student achievement — but pressure for perfection backfires.

A poem by Shlok Sharma, then a fifth-grader in Naperville, on the mistakes he made — from punching Justin Bieber to falling into a tributary. Childhood humor.

In 2011, Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of felonies for enrolling her daughters in a better school district — one of several such cases.

A 2011 reader's review of 'Along the Way,' a novel of Indian IT professionals' loves, careers, and compromises — from Andhra campuses to American cubicles.

A reader's review of Brian Weiss's Many Lives, Many Masters — the case of Catherine, past-life regression, and why the book eases fear of death.

From the undeciphered Indus script to Brahmi, Devanagari, Tamil, and Bengali — how India's writing systems evolved over four thousand years.

A reader's review of Jean Sasson's 'Princess' — the ghostwritten story of Princess Sultana and the appalling treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

Arun Shourie's book on raising his son Aditya carries his wife Anita's wisdom: gratitude for an ordinary, boring, eventless day — a caregiver's creed.

A reader's review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Palace of Illusions: the Mahabharata retold through Draupadi's fierce, questioning voice.

K.S. Krueger’s debut children’s fantasy — a hidden world of forest Traegons, an ancient prophecy, and an environmental fable done right.

What makes a book on learning how to learn worth reading? Spaced repetition, retrieval practice, and why fluency feels like competence but isn't.

Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Body promised rapid fat loss through self-experiment. What the 2010 bestseller got right -- and where to be cautious.

Steve Jobs at 30, weeks after leaving Apple: a candid 1985 Newsweek interview on getting fired, staying unbitter, and why customers cannot invent the future.