An Exquisite War on War

In her previous novels, including Cost, Roxana Robinson more than earned her merit badge as explorer of the gnarly beast that is a family in crisis. Her stunning new novel, Sparta, covers this same turf through 26-year-old Marine Conrad Farrel’s return home. The novel opens with a simple line—“There was a change in the engine […]

A Firsthand Novel of Surreal Afghanistan

Every once in a while, a book comes along that makes you want to wrest even your own work from readers’ hands and command that they instead read this. Masha Hamilton’s What Changes Everything is that kind of amazing. Hamilton has experience as a war correspondent, spouse and mother, and it is in part the […]

Backward and in High Heels: Sandra Day O’Connor

Chief Justice Warren Burger, one hand on Sandra Day O’Connor’s arm as they descended the steps of the Supreme Court just before her 2 p.m. swearing-in ceremony on September 25, 1981, shouted to reporters, “You’ve never seen me with a better looking justice.” Society pages cheerily noted that she and Byron White were the first […]