Webster County Library

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.    

Marie Arana’s biography assesses the man who led Latin America’s independence movement against Spanish rule.    

A new biography of Hugo Chávez can serve as a political obituary.    

Part of what made the discovery of gorillas so sensational in the Victorian era was that they were “too similar to humans for comfort.”    

To fight World War II, Roosevelt needed support from legislators who wanted to keep out Europe’s Jews.    

An abandoned daughter searches for her mother in Nancy Richler’s novel set in postwar Montreal.    

Owen King’s hero grapples with his first film and his complicated relationship with his father, a B-movie Lothario.    

Ira Katznelson examines how Franklin D. Roosevelt won approval for the New Deal, and at what cost.    

In this novel, Italian-Americans balance their aspirations for the future and their nostalgia for Italy.    

The money is nice, but literary awards often come with ideological baggage and emotional strings attached.    

“The Best of Punk Magazine” is the missing link in the flurry of books published over the past few years chronicling punk music and art.    

A reader responds to a recent essay by Dean Bakopoulos.    

A reader responds to a recent review of Mary Beth Keane’s “Fever.”    

Readers respond to a recent essay by Ben Greenman.    

A reader responds to a recent review of Clive Davis’s “Soundtrack of My Life.”    

In “Between Man and Beast,” Monte Reel tells the story of the 19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who returned from Africa with evidence that a creature of myth — the gorilla — actually existed.    

A thoughtless act profoundly alters a community.    

The author of the forthcoming novel “Maya’s Notebook” says reading Gabriel García Márquez made her want to become a writer: “I thought, ‘If this guy can do it, so can I.’”    

The book will look back at her time as secretary of state and also at “the urgent, ongoing need for American leadership in a changing world.”

The cartoonist delivers a graphic memoir and 'Star Wars'-inspired title this year.