What keeps her up at night

Jodi Picoult ’87 writes best-­sellers by asking ­questions about the things that worry us all

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

It is a beautiful morning at the New Hampshire home of best-selling author Jodi Picoult ’87, and all seems right with the world. Pumpkin-spice ­coffee is poured into orange Princeton mugs. Home­made chocolate-banana bread is served with apples picked from...Read more

What Princeton students are reading

An undergrad’s search for the book of her generation

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

When I was 12, I was that sort of voracious reader who ran up against the public library’s 40-book borrowing limit every week. Reading meant one thing: ­disappearing into Green Gables or some post-nuclear society as soon as I got home and emerging only in...Read more

A quiet place to dream

As the new head of the New York Public Library — gem of the city — Anthony Marx *86 *90 must navigate budget cuts, e-books, and tradition

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

There are few sacred spaces in midtown Manhattan, but the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library is one of them. Beneath the soaring 52-foot-high, wood-paneled ceiling studded with Poussin-tinted murals, it is imposing a Medici palace and...Read more

Searching for myself at The People’s Library

Jeff Kreisler ’95 visited another New York library

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

On the sixth day that protesters were occupying Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, I gave my book to an angry grandma. She tossed it aside with dramatic flair befitting a protester animated by a lifetime of injustice. A month later, I was reading The...Read more

The bookman

Internet, be damned: Nicholas Potter ’73 sells books the old-fashioned way

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

On Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, Nicholas Potter ’73 has been selling used books for more than 35 years, just down the street from the 400-year-old Palace of the Governors and St. Francis Cathedral. Bookselling is in Potter’s blood. His father was a...Read more

The book biz: Another view

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

The best-known Princeton alum in the book business surely must be Jeff Bezos ’86, founder of the online books-turned-everything retailer Amazon.com. But he is far from the only graduate selling books. Some, like James Goldwasser *99, president of Locus...Read more

The new tastemakers

Few newspapers review books these days. So who does?

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

Not long ago, newspapers and magazines considered it their cultural duty to guide readers through the torrent of books that American publishers sent forth. But apart from a few stalwarts, those periodicals — struggling as they are in a Web-oriented world —...Read more

Read these books

Published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue

PAW asked faculty members to respond to this question: What is the one book we all should read before we die — and why? Here’s what eight said ...Read more