Books & Literature | San Jose, Los Gatos, Mountain View, California

Confessions of a James Bond fanatic
A new book says 007's cultural relevance as the savior of the British Empire and the world is over. But one lifelong fan will never say never again.

Book Review: 'The God Delusion'
Book authored by Richard Dawkins.

Book Review: 'The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice'
Book authored by Greil Marcus.

Book Review: 'Cancer Vixen'
Book authored by Marisa Acocella Marchetto.

Book Review: 'Things I Didn't Know: A Memoir'
Book authored by Robert Hughes.

Book Review: 'Sailing From Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World'
Book authored by Colin Wells.

Book Review: 'Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life'
Book authored by Linda H. Davis.

Book Review: 'State of Denial: Bush at War, Part II'
Book authored by Bob Woodward.

Book Review: 'The Best American Comics 2006'
Harvey Pekar and Anne Moore select dark and troubling tales in a superb new collection.

Book Review: 'Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq'
Book authored by James Fallows.

Book Review: 'Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War'
Book authored by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

Comic Book Review: 'American Splendor'
Comic book written by Harvey Pekar.

Book Review: 'The Black Book'
Book authored by Orhan Pamuk.

Book Review: 'Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature'
Book authored by Fred Gray.

Book Review: 'Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair'
Book authored by Anthony Arthur.

Book Review: 'All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone'
Book authored by Myra MacPherson.

Book Review: 'The Art of S. Clay Wilson'
Published by Ten Speed Press.

Book Review: 'The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold'
Book authored by Geoffrey Robertson.

Book Review: 'Coma Therapy'
Local Campbell rock vocalist Eric Victorino of Strata tries his hand at writing in new book of stories.

Book Review: 'The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences'
Book authored by Louis Uchitelle.

Book Review: 'The Art of the Italian Movie Poster'
Book authored by Mel Bagshaw.

Book Review: 'The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism'
Book authored by Ross King.

Book Review: 'Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France'
Book authored by Fernanda Eberstadt.

Book Review: 'Written Lives: Essays'
Book authored by Javier Marias.

Book Review: 'The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Samantha Barbas'
Book authored by Richard Morgan.

Book Review: 'Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America'
Book authored by James Green.

'Election' author Tom Perrotta wins readers
Novelist comes to Montalvo literary series bearing his 'Little Children' and other bestsellers.

'A Dirty Job'
Christopher Moore returns to California with a tale of comic mayhem about a matter no less weighty than Death himself.

Book Review: 'A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan'
Book authored by Michael Kazin.

Book Review: 'Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career Of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler'
Book authored by Michael Rosenthal.

Book Review: 'La Perdida'
Book authored by Jessica Abel.

Book Review: 'Curry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors'
Book authored by Lizzie Collingham.

Book Review: 'The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise'
Book authored by Michael Grunwald.

Book Review: 'Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul'
Book authored by Scott Weidensaul.

Book Review: 'Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights'
Book authored by Kenji Yoshino.

Book Review: 'Still Standing: A Century of Urban Train Station Design'
Book authored by Christopher Brown.

Book Review: 'Beyond the Naked Eye: Details From the National Gallery'
Book authored by Jill Dunkerton and Rachel Billinge.

Book Review: 'The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold'
Book authored by Frank T. Kryza.

Book Review: 'Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945'
Book authored by Catherine Merridale.

Book Review: 'The Best of the Spirit'
Book authored by Will Eisner.

Book Review: 'Myself & the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson'
Book authored by Claire Harman.

Book Review: 'Lincoln's Melancholy'
Book authored by Joshua Wolf Shenk.

Book Review: 'The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design'
Book authored by Leonard Susskind.

Book Review: 'Utterly Monkey'
Book authored by Nick Laird.

Book Review: 'Crap Jobs: 100 Tales Of Workplace Hell'
Book edited by Dan Kieran.

Book Review: 'Come On In!: New Poems'
Book authored by Charles Bukowski.

Scoping Out Mencken
From Baltimore bars to the Scopes Monkey Trial, a new biography tracks the jabs and jests of journalist H.L. Mencken.

Book Review: 'The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East'
Book authored by Robert Fisk.

Book Review: 'Desert Queen'
Book authored by Janet Wallach.

Book Review: 'The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I'
Book edited by Meredith Tromble.

Book Review: 'Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us'
Book authored by Allen Salkin.

Book Review: 'Flashman on The March'
Book authored by George MacDonald Fraser.

Book Review: 'Georges Braque: A Life'
Book authored by Alex Danchev.

Iraq and a Hard Place
George Packer's brilliant new book, 'The Assassins' Gate,' dissects the illusions that got us stuck in Iraqi.

Mag Fever
'The Complete New Yorker' on eight tiny DVDs fulfills a magazine hoarder's wildest dreams.

Book Review: 'The Wit in the Dungeon'
Book authored by Anthony Holden.

Book Review: 'Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco'
Book compiled by the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Book Review: 'First and Fifteenth: Pop Art Short Stories'
Book authored by Steve Powers.

Book Review: 'Hugs: Thoughtlead'
Book authored by Mike Ogilvie.

Book Review: 'The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey'
Book authored by Candice Millard.

Twilight of The Trick
Gabriel García Márquez skewers the follies of an aging man in 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores.'

Rage Slaves
What's really behind America's supposedly 'random' workplace killings and school bomb plots? Mark Ames' 'Going Postal' has an unsettling answer.

Book Review: 'The Oxford Guide to Library Research'

Book Review: 'The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright'

Book Review: 'The Life of David'

Book Review: 'Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850'

Book Review: 'The Simpsons: One Step Beyond Forever'

Book Review: 'Slam Dunks and No-Brainers'

Book Review: 'Cities of the World: A History in Maps'

The Last Thing She Wanted
Joan Didion analyzes her own tragedy in 'The Year of Magical Thinking.'

Misfit Lit
Author Sarah Vowell views the world through the prism of history instead of the romanticized musical mixtape.

Book Review: 'Woken Furies'
Book authored by Richard Morgan.

Book Review: 'Cinnamon Kiss'
Book authored by Walter Mosley.

Book Review: 'Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary'
Book authored by Henry Hitchings.

Book Review: 'Greetings From the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005'
Book authored by Kim Stringfellow.

Book Review: 'Matisse the Master--A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954'
Book authored by Hilary Spurling.

Book Review: 'The Algebraist'
Book authored by Iain M. Banks.

Book Review: 'The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery and Lore of the Persian Carpet'
Book authored by Brian Murphy.

A Fancy Prose Style
In 1955, Vladimir Nabokov shocked readers with a novel of forbidden lust; 'Lolita' still has the power to disturb.

Coach Potatoes
Frank Fitzpatrick's fascinating 'The Lion in Autumn' is one of the best books ever written on the rise and fall of a great college football coach.

Book Review: 'The Trudeau Vector'
Book authored by Juris Jurjevics.

Book Review: 'Spice: A History of a Temptation'
Book authored by Jack Turner.

Book Review: 'Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World'
Book authored by Hugh Pope.

Book Review: 'Lunar Park'
Book authored by Bret Easton Ellis.

Book Review: 'Food in Painting: From the Renaissance To the Present'
Book authored by Kenneth Bendiner.

Book Review: 'Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika'
Book authored by Giles Foden.

Book Review: 'The Tattoo Artist'
Book authored by Jill Ciment.

Book Review: 'Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty'

Logic of the Bizarre
Aimee Bender's stories in 'Willful Creatures' take logical detours through bizarre landscapes.

Book Review: 'The People's Tycoon'
Book authored by Steven Watts.

Book Review: 'Buffalo Bill in Bologna'
Book authored by Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes.

Book Review: 'Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey'
Book authored by Bill Roorbach.

The Trouble With Islam-Bashing
Poet Nimah Ismail Nawwab brought her vision of Saudi Arabian Islam to San Jose. But is she too honest to succeed in America's 'bad Muslim' pop culture?

Book Review: 'The 8:55 to Baghdad'
Book authored by Andres Eames.

Book Review: 'Railroad: Identity, Design and Culture'
Book authored by Keith Lovegrove.

Book Review: 'Desertion'
Book authored by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

Book Review: 'The Grail Bird'
Book authored by Tim Gallagher.

Book Review: 'Descent'
Book authored by Brad Matsen.

Book Review: 'Here Is Where We Meet'
Book authored by John Berger.

Book Review: 'The Historian'
Book authored by Elizabeth Kostova.

Book Review: 'The Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo'
Book authored by Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson.

Wet & Wild
Saratoga author Beth Lisick tells all in her new book of strange-but-true tales, 'Everybody Into the Pool.'

Istanbul Dreams
Orhan Pamuk's brilliant memoir, 'Istanbul,' binds the author to a city of ghosts.

The Mark Of Isabel
Novelist Isabel Allende cuts a new swath through the myth of Zorro.

The Whole Noyce
Stanford historian Leslie Berlin tracks the high-tech life of chip father Robert Noyce in a new biography.

Chuck Amuck
Chuck Palahniuk probes for a visceral response in his harrowing new novel, 'Haunted.'

Through The Looking Screen
John Markoff's new book examines the hippie-drugs-pixels connection behind the invention of the computer.

Tough the Shaman
Randy Fuller's new book proves that the mediums are the messengers.

Full Circle
Jeff Chang explores hip-hop's global effect in 'Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.'

Old-School San Jose
The city that once was still lives in a new photo book about San Jose's historic downtown.

Crash Site
A new book explores the words and wisdom of J.G. Ballard.

Remembering Iris Chang
Local author Iris Chang, 1968-2004, spoke with passion and force about unspeakable incidents.

Ring Bearer
'Unforgivable Blackness' brings pioneering black boxer Jack Johnson to life in all his vulgar and splendid glory.

Choose Death
A new book puts extreme metal through the grinder.

Milosz in Memory
In his memoir, 'Striking Through the Masks,' a Santa Cruz writer recalls his encounters with poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Baseball Fates
Michael Sokolove's new book charts the wildly varying fates of major leaguers from one of the most famous classes of high school players.

Kick Start
A new book uses soccer to explain everything.

Bill of Particulars
Bill Clinton's 'My Life' is 957 pages long, but we know some shortcuts from Hope to Washington, D.C.

We'll Always Have Paris
Alistair Horne explains why we love the city of lights in 'The Seven Ages of Paris.'

Luck Be a Lady
Nina Marie Martínez's '¡Caramba!' spins a California novel in which saints and sinners win.

On the Bush Beat
Kevin Phillips and Arianna Huffington have their eyes on the president in two new books.

Green History
There's more to Ireland than St. Patrick's Day, according to Tim Pat Coogan's new history.

Canal Zone
A San Jose writer succumbs to the lure of Venice's gondoliers in a new memoir.

Complex Simon
Author and visiting SJSU teacher Simon Winchester knows a lot about just about everything.

Politics of Make-Believe
In 'The Price of Loyalty,' ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill exposes Bush's alternative universe.

Paging Through Oz
A few good books add depth to a shallow year.

The Roaring '90s
A new anthology from 'The Baffler' magazine--'Boob Jubilee'--dissects the failed economics of the decade that sucked.

Altar Identities
Pulp superheroes exert a strange fascination in the comic-book art of Alex Ross.

Words Without End
Simon Winchester tracks the history of the OED, the bible of the English language.

A Fair and Balanced Book Review
Al Franken knows how to get under Bill O'Reilly's skin--and that's a good thing.

Sandman Grit
Neil Gaiman brings his 'Endless Nights' to SJSU.

Rudy and the Ants
Anarchy in Silicon Valley with cult sci-fi novelist Rudy Rucker.

Santa Cruz 2053
Novelist Rudy Rucker not only invented cyberpunk, he put Santa Cruz on the science-fiction map. Now he takes on hackers and ants.

A 'Hard Rain' Is Gonna Fall
Menlo Park novelist Barry Eisler tracks his spy hero through Tokyo in second John Rain thriller.

Silicon Dreamin'
Author Glenna Matthews charts history of women in high tech's ground zero.

Coming of Age
Ariel Gore of Hip Mama fame narrates her journeys from Palo Alto to the Far East and back.

Bugging Out
When software runs our lives, all it takes is one bug to unplug us.

The complete Ellen Ullman interview
More from the 'Close to the Machine' author.

The Debugger
An excerpt from Ellen Ullman's novel 'The Bug.'

Bat Out of Hell
From bat kitsch to manga marvel, the legend of Batman still flies.

Networking
Email theorist Geert Lovink explores the future of online dialogue.

Plague Journal
Marilyn Chase's 'Barbary Plague' chronicles a health scare with modern echoes.

All Booked Up in Wales
Paul Collins lingers in the stacks.

Richer Gear
Author Brad Stone chronicles the big egos and big money behind the rise of robot combat.

Chicago Confidential
A serial killer preys on the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Erik Larson's 'The Devil in the White City.'

Escape Artist
Comic-book artist Jim Steranko helped the genre escape its bounds--and ended up in the pages of Michael Chabon's novel.