The Best of Salon.com

Eager to get a taste of Salon.com's provocative book content, but don't know where to start? Browse the selections below to savor the breadth and wit of Salon's features, interviews, and reviews.

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Selected Book Features

+ The Man Who Saved the World
By David Talbot
Hoist a glass of green beer to St. Patrick, the man author Thomas Cahill says is responsible for preserving Western civilization

+ Tome Deaf
By Gary Kamiya
The New York Public Library's "Books of the Century" is a rigged literary parlor game

+ My Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov
By Mary Gaitskill
A tribute to "the sorcerer of cruelty."

+ Poetry for the Rest of Us
By Laura Miller
Meet nine poets who will get under your skin.

+ Hero of a Thousand Workspaces
By Scott Rosenberg
Scott Adams' "Dilbert" escapes from his cubicle to the bestseller list

+ The Salon Book Awards 1996
By Laura Miller and Dwight Garner

+ The Salon Book Awards 1997
By Laura Miller and Dwight Garner

+ Monstrous Acts and Little Murders
By Jonathan Lethem
A new collection of unpublished stories betrays the two faces of Shirley Jackson, the writer who created "The Lottery."

+ Vice Grip
By Lily Burana
Sure, we all love stories of degradation and vice, especially when the storyteller has a pretty face. But how many bad-girl memoirs do we need, anyway?

+ Mississippi Churning
By Dwight Garner
Has Grisham replaced Faulkner as the literary spirit of the South?

+ Twilight of the Goats
By D. T. Max
They're old and in the way, but Mailer, Roth and Bellow won't leave the barnyard

+ The road best traveled
By Bill McKibben
Before you kill yourself, M. Scott Peck argues, try killing your ego.

+ Trash Lit 101
By Dwight Garner
Drop those upturned noses! Every reader's diet should -- and usually does -- contain a leavening of bestsellers.

+ Why did they ever ban a book this bad?
By Garrison Keillor
A review of the "scandalous" "Sister Carrie" for the Salon Classics Book Group.

+ Fiction Victim
By Erica Jong
Erica Jong's tribute to "Madame Bovary" for the Salon Classics Book Group

+ Publish and perish
By Morgan Cast
Overqualified and grotesquely underpaid, publishing industry serfs labor for love -- or something other than money.

+ Save These Books!
By Dwight Garner
Publishing's trash cans are filled with garbage -- but also with literary gems. Some well-known writers celebrate and mourn their favotire out of print books.

+ Communism on Your Coffee Table!
By Barbara Ehrenreich

All-conquering capitalism has turned Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" into the perfect accessory for your ironic, upwardly mobile lifestyle.

+ The many voices of Ken Kalfus
By Laura Miller
Ken Kalfus emerges as a major literary talent his story collection "Thirst"

+ The Mother of Masochism
By Molly Weatherfield
Eulogy for the mysterious woman who wrote "Story of O"

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Selected Salon.com Author Interviews

P.D. James
Stanley Crouch
Gore Vidal
Richard Ford
Jamaica Kincaid
Al Franken
Haruki Murakami
Mark Leyner
Allan Gurganus
Edmund White
Caleb Carr
Arundhati Roy
Tom Clancy
Robert Hughes
Mary Karr
Amy Tan
John Irving
Margaret Atwood
Louise Erdrich
Nicholson Baker
David Foster Wallace
John Updike
Paul Theroux

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Selected Book Reviews -- Fiction

+ Cocaine Nights
J.G. Ballard

+ Park City
Ann Beattie

+ My Heart Laid Bare
Joyce Carol Oates

+ My Year of Meats
Ruth Ozeki

+ The Exes
Pagan Kennedy

+ A Conspiracy of Tall Men
Noah Hawley

+ Misadventures in the (213)
Dennis Hensley

+ Lucky Bastard
Charles McCarry

+ The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Aimee Bender

+ Kaaterskill Falls
Allegra Goodman

+ Tomato Red
Daniel Woodrell

+ The Museum Guard
Howard Norman

+ For Kings and Planets
Ethan Canin

+ Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy

+ The Farming of Bones
Edwidge Danticat

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Selected Book Reviews -- Nonfiction

+ Split: A Counterculture Childhood
Lisa Michaels

+ Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors
Ray Manzarek

+ Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue
Dennis Perrin

+ Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture
Kathy Peiss

+ Summer of Deliverance
Christopher Dickey

+ The Muhammad Ali Reader
Gerald Early, editor

+ Will this do?: An Autobiography
Auberon Waugh

+ The American Way of Death Revisited
Jessica Mitford

+ The Sneaker Book: An Anatomy of an Industry and an Icon
Tom Vanderbilt

+ Slow Motion: A True Story
Dani Shapiro

+ Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America
Larry Sloman

+ Viper Rum
Mary Karr

+ Rogue Ambassador
Smith Hempstone

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