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German expressionism turns 20th century anxiety into a celebration of modern sadness. Full of color and movement, the depictions portray emotions without words, sentiments without symbols. Their lack of precision reflects emotional confusion and misdirected apprehension.

KEEPING AN EYE OPEN Essays on Art By Julian Barnes Illustrated. 278 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30. What is the point of reading biographies of artists? Critics have frequently come [...]

IN MONTMARTRE Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910 By Sue Roe Illustrated. 365 pp. Penguin Press. $29.95. SHOCKING PARIS Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse By Stanley Meisler [...]

WAGSTAFF Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography By Philip Gefter Illustrated. 458 pp. Liveright Publishing. $35. The mention of Sam Wagstaff's name is likely to elicit a respectful nod from [...]

WHISTLER A Life for Art's Sake By Daniel E. Sutherland Illustrated. 440 pp. Yale University Press. $40. Of all the American artists of the 19th century, James Abbott McNeill Whistler [...]

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage edited by Cathi Hanauer. New York: William Morrow, 2002, 304 pp., $23.95 hardcover. [...]

THE ART OF CONTROVERSY Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power By Victor S. Navasky Illustrated. 231 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95. It has been eight years since a set of [...]

SAUL STEINBERG A Biography By Deirdre Bair Illustrated. 732 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $40. Saul Steinberg, the pre-eminent cartoonist of the 20th century, specialized in high-I.Q. humor. In an age [...]

SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis By Timothy Egan Illustrated. 370 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $28. Edward Curtis deserves to be [...]

DAVID HOCKNEY The Biography, 1937-1975: A Rake's Progress By Christopher Simon Sykes Illustrated. 363 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35. David Hockney is often described as England's most popular artist, but [...]

VAN GOGH The Life By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith Illustrated. 953 pp. Random House. $40 Vincent VAN GOGH tends to be remembered as an art saint whose radiant [...]

MY FARAWAY ONE Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume I, 1915-1933 Edited by Sarah Greenough Illustrated. 814 pp. Yale University Press. $39.95. Georgia O'Keeffe never seemed to [...]

Your new documentary, ''Reagan,'' which makes its premiere on HBO on Feb. 7 in honor of the president's 100th birthday, includes some wonderful footage of Reagan as a small-town lifeguard, [...]

CORRECTION APPENDED ALICE NEEL The Art of Not Sitting Pretty By Phoebe Hoban Illustrated. 500 pp. St. Martin's Press. $35 Alice Neel has never commanded the household-name status of Georgia [...]

GRANT WOOD A Life By R. Tripp Evans Illustrated. 402 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $37.50 ''American Gothic'' has been described as the most reproduced painting in this country, which is [...]

As the co-chairwoman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose $33 billion endowment makes it the largest private foundation in the world, you've focused your efforts on the health [...]

Although you just signed with the Boston Celtics, your most daunting competition this month comes from Rachael Ray, whom you're facing in a cook-off on your reality television show ''Shaq [...]

The Israeli security cabinet just voted to ease the three-year blockade on Gaza, in the wake of the tragic naval attack on the Mavi Marmara by Israeli commandos. What does [...]

LEO AND HIS CIRCLE The Life of Leo Castelli By Annie Cohen-Solal Translated by Mark Polizzotti with the author Illustrated. 540 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35. Most art dealers, by [...]

As a British-American critic, essayist and all-purpose iconoclast, you are known as one of the defining voices of the new atheism. But your just-published memoir, ''Hitch-22,'' is in fact an [...]

After years of sitting in a room in Southern California writing a blog for Slate magazine, you're planning to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer in the Democratic primary in California in [...]

As an Anglican archbishop who spent decades working to defeat apartheid and is widely considered the moral conscience of South Africa, what do you make of your country's current president, [...]

What was it like to spend nine years trying to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard Madoff was a fraud, only to learn that the agency thought he [...]

Your once-quiet life as a congressman from Wisconsin was forever altered at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore last month, when President Obama singled you out as a ''pretty sincere [...]