You can get your fill of sarcastic book review right here, if you enjoy that kind of thing.

You've lived all your life in America, never attended a megachurch or a brothel, don't own guns, are non-Amish, and it dawns on you that this is a book about the French. There's no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title.

America is changing, he concludes, but America will endure. Thanks, pal. I don't imagine France collapsing anytime soon either. Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?

Garrison Keillor Skewers Bernard-Henri Lévy

In chronicling how Al Qaeda's brand of Islamic fundamentalism came to thrive in the chaos left by the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, Mr. Coll, 46, an associate editor and former managing editor at The Washington Post, pieced together the period of ignorance and inaction that led to the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

The 2005 Pulitzers

Journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell will be live online at 2.30pm on Tuesday February 22. Gladwell's new book, Blink, investigates why some people's gut instincts are better than others' and why a snap judgment made very quickly can actually be more effective than one made deliberately and cautiously.

Guardian Unlimited Talk - Author Malcolm Gladwell live online, Tuesday February 22

In this review, NYT's Janet Maslin makes a few snap judgments about Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Blink", which she says is "undercut by naggingly bad grammar."

Comparing it to "The Tipping Point", she calls it "a similarly anecdotal account of how split-second decisions are made."

In this context, the news that "snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick" passes for a bright idea.

Gladwell delivers what is essentially a hybrid of marketing wisdom and self-help -- stronger on broad, catchy constructs than on innovative thinking.

'Blink': Haste Isn't All Waste

... numbing, self-conscious garrulity ... so long-winded and tedious ... sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull ... a hodgepodge of jottings ... assailing right-wing enemies for his woes ... self-serving, often turgid attempts to defend his reputation ...

Other than that, what did you think?

The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages