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WHEN Henry David Thoreau retreated to the woods, he famously told his readers that he wanted 'to front only the essential facts of life.' What he didn't say is that [...]

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets By Sudhir Venkatesh. The Penguin Press. $25.95: Snitch: Informers, Cooperators and the Corruption of Justice By Ethan Brown. [...]

DOUG UNPLUGGED Written and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino 40 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9) DREAM FRIENDS Written and illustrated by You Byun 32 pp. [...]

THE MAGICIANS By Lev Grossman 402 pp. Viking. $26.95 Fantasy novels involve magic and are a little bit like magic themselves. To work, they require of readers a willingness to [...]

STEALING MYSPACE The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America By Julia Angwin Illustrated. 371 pp. Random House. $27 MySpace is one of the Web's great accidents. The [...]

A CURE FOR NIGHT By Justin Peacock 341 pp. Doubleday. $24.95 Joel Deveraux is a sad young lawyer. While taking a break from writing memos, he gets mixed up with [...]

THE GODFATHER'S REVENGE By Mark Winegardner. 487 pp. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $25.95. Say what you will about the Mafia, it's an organization that knows how to elegantly dispose of [...]

Men, of course, do not give birth, but they have their own shadow form of labor: installing the baby's car seat. This seemingly simple job has ruined plenty of golfing [...]

CUT AND RUN By Ridley Pearson. 368 pp. Hyperion. $23.95. Ridley Pearson writes best-selling crime novels. He's a best-selling kind of guy. He plays bass guitar in a band with [...]

Russell Jones is a forty-four-year-old art director who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In the early winter of 1996, he and his wife began to receive some unusual phone calls [...]

THE DARK TOWER The Dark Tower VII. By Stephen King. Illustrated by Michael Whelan. 845 pp. Donald M. Grant in association with Scribner. $35. IN 1970, when he was 22, [...]

Despite a graphic design that calls to mind a middle-school World Cultures textbook, the ''Essential Shakespeare Handbook'' (DK, $25) deserves a place next to your edition of Shakespeare's plays. Leslie [...]

Human Amusements By Wayne Johnston. Anchor, paper, $13.95. Wayne Johnston's novel, first published in Canada in 1974 and issued here for the first time, is a comic story set at [...]

Careful observers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this week may notice an unusual encounter, one that the historian Daniel Boorstin might have called a pseudo pseudo-event. Alexandra Kerry, [...]

Fans of Japanese horror films appear to be related to those mysterious people who like to get out of their cars to inspect roadkill, or those who watch bypass surgery [...]

A SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION By David Liss. 381 pp. New York: Random House. $24.95. In his first novel, ''A Conspiracy of Paper,'' David Liss achieved the literary equivalent of turning [...]

The plight of the modern American restaurant-goer: first we examine the menu, then we examine our conscience. The steak dinner has become a guilt trip, and veal an unforgivable sin. [...]

Rick Washburn, a weapons coordinator, has a disarming way of greeting people: 'Are you the guy that needs the 9-millimetre?' He works out of his loft apartment, a converted doll [...]

Best boy. You see the credit scrolling up the screen (other people in your row are shuffling their feet impatiently) and, just for a moment, you let yourself wonder about [...]

THE PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY By Steve Martin. Hyperion, $19.95. Why does Steve Martin write fiction? He's been successful on other stages, and now, with the publication of his new [...]

Breezy Point is a place where you can pull off a neat, necessary trick of urban living: escaping the city while remaining within the city limits. A slender peninsula of [...]

Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America By Cynthia Carr. Crown. $25.95. It's a famous photograph that once seen, you never forget: [...]

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. By Franklin Foer, Harper Collins. $24.95, Soccer scribes are a bit like wine connoisseurs, detecting hints of national character where [...]

Shyness: how Normal Behavior Became a sickness By Christopher Lane. Yale University Press. $27.50. 'Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd [...]

Poor People By William T. Vollmann. Ecco. $29.95. Take James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, throw in Tokyo prostitutes, Kazakh peasants, Chinese immigrant traffickers, and a heady brew [...]

Blocking the Courthouse Door By Stephanie Mencimer. Free Press. $26. Stop me if you've heard this one before: A woman bums her lap with a cup of McDonald's coffee and [...]

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter By Steven Johnson. Riverhead. $23.95. This slim manifesto addresses that whisper of guilt that arises [...]

Lists art events in New York City from October 20-26, 2004. Theatrical productions; Painting exhibit; Concerts; Dance.

Comments on several motion pictures released in the U.S. 'Adaptation,' directed by Spike Jonze and starring Nicholas Cage; 'Analyze That,' directed by Harold Ramis and starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal; 'Far From Heaven,' starring Julianne Moore; 'Intacto,' directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

The article profiles authors in 2008 who have written books that espouse the same environmental philosophies which were found in Henry David Thoreau's book "Walden". A discussion of the content of environmentally related books and articles that were written by Colin Beavan, Judith Levine, Mary Carlomagno and others, is presented.

This article presents news briefs regarding some readings and talks conducted in New York City, New York. It reports that on March 4, 2004, Kate Christensen, a novelist, read a few lines from her latest novel at the Madison Avenue in the city to introduce her novel. On March 3, 2004, writer John Hodgman's lecture series, named "Little Gray Book," was introduced and performed at Fifth Avenue, a museum of the city.

Reviews several motion pictures shown in New York City. 'Baran,' starring Zahra Bahrami and directed by Majid Majidi; 'Changing Lanes,' starring Ben Affleck and directed by Roger Michell; 'Divertimento,' starring Michel Piccoli and directed by Jacques Rivette; 'Enigma,' starring Dougray Scott.

Profiles actor Matthew Broderick. Personal background; Career highlights; Critical acclaim for Broderick's role in the Broadway play “The Producers”.

Reviews the motion picture "Vanity Fair," directed by Mira Nair and starring Reese Witherspoon.