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

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