New York Times Book Review. Included with the Sunday New York Times,
229 West 43rd Street, New York NY 10026, Tel: 212-556-1234. (Also
available separately by subscription.)
Like its parent paper, "The New York Times Book Review" (a supplement
to the Sunday "Times") is in the business of establishing who and what is
okay, and who and what isn't. If you get reviewed on its front page, you
have almost certainly arrived, or are about to. If you get reviewed at all,
even critically, you're still probably somebody -- although the magazine
does occasionally take out a contract on some wretched author who has
strayed too far outside the consensus on foreign policy, or on something
else the "Times" cares about. But at the bottom of the heap are the
literary unpersons who never get reviewed at all. Such is the fate of the
renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, who writes massive, scholarly books
critical of the U.S. and Israel -- and of the "Times" itself.
Because of the volume of books this magazine sets out to notice,
individual reviews tend to be brief. This is often a blessing; even at
500 words, some lame bit of book-chat can seem long. But even its best
review essays often become exercises in miniaturization. There's room to
call somebody's ideas crazy, but not room to argue this claim from first
principles.
-- Steve Badrich
Extract the names from this source
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