We were surprised to discover that Louis Begley, consummate chronicler of Waspy things, had written a “biographical essay” on Franz Kafka. (Perhaps we shouldn’t have been: Both men, besides being ...

Max Beerbohm once observed there were some writers who have been spoiled by their desire to do “important” work: “Some people are born to lift heavy weights. Some are born to juggle with golden balls.

As an experienced biographer, Hermione Lee knows a hungry audience. “Readers of biography are greedy readers, with an insatiable appetite for detail and story,” writes the British scholar, a professor ...

MR. SABINE has attempted in these volumes to present in a judicial spirit a chapter of our Revolutionary history which usually bears the most of passion in its recital, — believing, as he does, that ...