The Journal's first book review in 2008 discussed Newsweek reporter Daniel McGinn's "House Lust," about America's real-estate binge before the lust went bust, and today's paper carries a review of John W. O'Malley's "What Happened at Vatican II." Between those bookends, our reviewers introduced Journal readers to hundreds of titles on a kaleidoscopic array of subjects

Five serving members of the famed 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which fought with distinction during the Civil War, will help The Morse Institute Library of Natick celebrate its 135th anniversary Sunday.

To say that U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Eric Maddox masterminded Saddam Hussein's capture is something of an overstatement, and one guesses Maddox would be the first to admit it. He readily recognizes it was the work of a large team of which he was never in charge.

Hey, you. Yeah, you there, skimming the Drudge Report, reading your RSS feed of Yahoo! News on your BlackBerry, trolling through the video clips on YouTube. You're a news junkie for the 21st century. Congratulations.

Plenty of sex books claim to answer the questions we're too afraid to ask. In "Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?" author Jena Pincott answers questions we might never have thought to ask.

Book Review

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, University of Massachusetts professor Max Page was proofreading a proposal for an exhibit at a New York museum about a subject he knew well - the destruction of New York City.

Publisher Jane Daniel now describes Misha Defonseca's story of surviving the Holocaust as a 7-year-old Jewish orphan escaping Nazis by living with wolves as "Anne Frank with a happy ending."

Book Review

As the recent cult documentaries "King of Kong" and "Darkon" have shown, geeks make for great entertainment - even for those who don't necessarily share their weird interests. Mark Barrowcliffe's humorous, self-deprecating memoir of his misspent youth, "The Elfish Gene," is another welcome addition to the growing nerdsploitation genre.

Book Review

The last time your mother tried to tell you how or how not to act, did you wonder what made her believe she was right? Therein lies one of the chief enticements of "Emily Post," the new biography of the etiquette goddess from noted biographer Laura Claridge.

Brooke Astor book offers behind-the-scenes detail.