Always try to do too much must be taken as one of Salman Rushdie's mantras and he certainly lives up to it here This sprawling story flashes back and forth from pre-World War II Strasbourg to present-day Los Angeles touchesat least fleetinglyon every major world crisis from the Holocaust to

Joan Didion has been writing books for more than 40 years. Her newest and most unforgettable book is "The Year of Magical Thinking."

J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist whose brilliant blue eyes came to express such engulfing sadness, brought a new kind of fire into the world and was burned by it. Like Hesiod's Prometheus, Oppenheimer fought on the side of humankind, giving us the tools and weapons to determine our own fate; and fate punished him for it.

Upon John Gregory Dunne's death of a heart attack in December 2003 the many obituaries and eulogies for this famous man of letters stressed the deft touch Dunne brought as a writer to those subjects he knew well.

The front cover of 'Living to Tell the Tale' shows the author as a wide-eyed child of 2, while the back cover shows the Nobel laureate as a distinguished gentleman of 75.

Whether we love or hate the "Lord of the Rings" films, we have to admire them: they are a monumental cinematic achievement. Shot over 274 days for $281 million and lasting 558 minutes, these films have, at the time of writing and in the United States alone, grossed over $897 million.