Books

It's been four years now since our last encounter with Robert Langdon, the be-tweeded hero who has Da Vinci'd and Demon-ed his way through three previous Dan Brown page-rippers. Brown's last book, " The Lost Symbol ," came out in 2009, smack in the vortex of a Brownado — a whirling era of "Da Vinci Code" European tour packages and Tom Hanks's second cinematic turn as the lank-haired Harvard symbologist. "The Lost Symbol" seemed of the moment and of particularly heightened American interest, set as it was in D.C. Tuesday marks...

In "Beyond War," David Rohde sets out to find a new path for the United States in the Middle East after a decade of war and much longer support for unpopular dictatorial regimes. Surveying a region in turmoil and looking back to American follies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rohde calls for the United States to scale back its military ambitions and focus instead on supporting moderates and an impatient rising generation of Arabs and Muslims eager to engage with the world. Rohde characterizes his book as "an effort to describe a new, more...

Street Address A : A big tan house in North Kingstown, Rhode Island; the corner lot of a woody cul de sac near a bike path populated by joggers in Lululemon. Quiet and country charming, a well-landscaped American achievement. This is the house where Katherine Russell grew up, with her parents and two sisters. Street Address Z : An apartment in a rowhouse in Cambridge, Mass., the most run-down structure on an otherwise cheerful block. A building with cracked window panes on the second floor and a...

When I'm reincarnated, I want to come back as a robot. Being a human again, or a poodle, or a goldfish, will seem so sadly biological. Robots, on the other hand, will have all the fun — at the very least, juggling a dozen balls, seeing around corners and walking up walls on sticky feet — if you believe the picture of the world offered by Illah Reza Nourbakhsh in his new book, "Robot Futures. " I got the sense that Nourbakhsh, though apparently still human, has gone over to the robot side.

Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States. That's the most boring thing you'll read about him in this story. Consider this: For most of the people who have been president of the United States (and there have been only 43, and they've all been men), that title would be the highlight of a lifetime, the accomplishment to be most proud of, the first thing to appear on your gravestone. Not so with Jefferson. He chose three accomplishments to be recorded on his tombstone, and being president didn't even...

T here I was, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, looking down at the Colorado River. Animal tracks in the snow made a dotted line beside the water. But where, I wondered, were the bighorn sheep? The black bears? I pressed my nose to the glass and followed the tracks carefully, expecting — any second now — to see wildlife. I was in my 40th hour aboard Amtrak , nearly 2,000 miles into a 3,218-mile cross-country adventure. I'd packed five books, my laptop, several movies and hours of music, figuring that...

Michael Beschloss has written nine books — and in the past six months, more than 1,000 tweets. For a historian accustomed to quiet pursuits and tweedy acceptance, his Twitter account, @beschlossDC , has become an unexpected source of popular and critical approbation. He has used Twitter to transmit historical-recording snippets, quotes, documents and — most successfully — era-specific photographs that dignify a newish platform of communication. Unlike many other...

The story Nora Roberts likes to tell of her transformation from harried homemaker to published novelist reads like something from one of her novels: Stuck at home with her two young sons during a 1979 snowstorm, the Silver Spring native started writing longhand, and the epiphany hit: " ‘ This is it . This is the thing I am meant to do.' The sun came out and the snow melted. " The moment her first book, "Irish Thoroughbred," was accepted for publication in 1980, Roberts recalls, "was better...

A. LINCOLN A Biography By Ronald C. White Jr. Random House. 796 pp. $35 The famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass once declared: "It is impossible for . . . anybody . . . to say anything new about Abraham Lincoln. " And that was in 1893! More than 100 years later, as we contemplate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, an avalanche of new books about the 16th president descends upon an eager reading audience. Why? Ronald C. White Jr., an astute scholar of Lincoln's religion and language, has an apt answer:...

Thirty-something years ago, Martha Grimes was a single mom with a drinking problem. She bought vodka – Smirnoff, Stolichnaya — in half-gallon jugs. She taught English 101 at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, a job she couldn't stand. She argued so vehemently with post office clerks about mailing rates for her manuscripts — she wanted the cheaper book rate — that her son, embarrassed, preferred to wait in the car. She was in her late 40s. She had never published anything.

Carlos Lozada is Outlook editor of The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter: @carloslozadaWP . If government did not exist, we would have to invent it. And then we'd have to reinvent it, because it would be lousy and everyone would hate it. Since the founders chucked the Articles of Confederation, Americans have been reinventing government, reimagining structures and rules, tinkering to make their union just a little less imperfect....

Maureen Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is the book critic for the NPR program "Fresh Air. " A few years ago, a friend, whose child attends a school for kids with learning disabilities, tried to start a book club for parents at the school. Her motivation was simple: If the parents got together once a month and talked about a book they'd read on topics like Asperger syndrome or ADHD, they'd be better equipped to help their children. Much to my...

KidsPost readers know that we love animals. We've featured rescued seals, therapy dogs and baby zoo animals on these pages recently. This summer, we're going to visit with unusual animals. Some have powers that aren't normal. Some exist only in myths. And some tell their own stories. Kids­Post Summer Book Club is going on "Animal Adventures," and we hope you will come along. The book club kicks off June 16, but before we start, we need your help. Using the template on this page (or anything that is 2 by 5 inches)

NEW YORK — Over the past two years, publishers have been steadily filling one of the largest gaps in the e-book catalogue — poetry. Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens have been among the poets whose work recently became available in electronic format. And Random House Inc., W.W. Norton and several other publishers now routinely release new books in both print and digital versions, including last month's Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Sharon Olds' "Stag's Leap.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of the New Republic. As the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of affirmative action , voting rights and same-sex marriage by the end of June, interest in the ideological and institutional fault lines among the justices remains high. Ever since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took the helm in 2005, a series of books and...

Let's get this part out of the way: The two books under review here — Joe Hill's "NOS4A2" and Owen King's "Double Feature" — were written by Stephen King's sons. As biographical facts go, that is undoubtedly an interesting one. But these two young writers have distinctive voices and highly developed talents. They deserve to be considered solely on the basis of their undeniable merits. That said, Hill's "NOS4A2" is the kind of big, wide-ranging horror novel that will inevitably evoke comparisons to Stephen King's work.

The book Laura Murphy wants removed from Fairfax County classrooms is considered a modern American classic. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a masterpiece of fiction whose author's 1993 Nobel Prize in literature citation said that she, "in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality. " But Toni Morrison's " Beloved ," Murphy said, depicts scenes of bestiality, gang rape and an infant's gruesome murder, content she...

The Justice Department accused Apple executives, including its late chief executive Steve Jobs, of leading a conspiracy that raised e-book prices in an attempt to hurt Amazon and other competitors, according to documents filed in federal court Tuesday. At one point, Eddy Cue, Apple's lead e-books negotiator, counseled the chief executive of Random House to withhold e-books from Amazon unless it agreed to higher prices, the Justice Department said. Another publisher, Macmillan, would later employ this strategy,...

"Fairy tales have their own remorseless logic and their own rules," Audrey Niffenegger notes in her acknowledgments to this illustrated novella. She's absolutely right. Would that she had followed those rules. Niffenegger has a well-earned reputation as a fantasist. She's also been creating illustrated books since before her bestselling novel " The Time Traveler's Wife " made her famous. " Raven Girl " was commissioned as a scenario for a ballet choreographed by Wayne McGregor that will debut in...