Books

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

The city of New York violated the Constitution by raiding an Occupy Wall Street site last year, destroying the "People's Library" and seizing its 3,600 books, a new lawsuit charged Thursday. The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan demanded at least $50,000 in damages, enough to cover the $43,000 value of the books and other costs, along with several thousand dollars in punitive damages. The books were taken in the early morning hours of Nov. 15 when police raided a Manhattan park where the group had gathered for several months to protest income inequality in the...

Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It's an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down? This controversy has been flaring up — sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings — ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic.

Harvard University alumni attending their 50th class reunion this week are getting updates on classmates, but one person stands out among those sharing news about career moves, retirements and grandkids — Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski graduated in 1962 and is locked up in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado for killing three people and injuring 23 during a nationwide bombing spree between 1978 and 1995. In an alumni directory, he lists his occupation as "prisoner" and says his awards are "Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern...

NEWTON - Dan Kennedy will graduate from Boston College on Monday, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of the school's most prestigious prize, the Edward H. Finnegan Award. Winners of the Finnegan, given to the student who best exemplifies the BC motto, "ever to excel," tend to go big - top grad schools, Wall Street, overseas fellowships. Kennedy is planning to give away his computer, recycle his Blackberry, and move to a modest communal house in St. Paul, Minn.

Mitt Romney has long called himself a venture capitalist, experience he says helps him understand the economy better than other candidates for president. But he spent much more of his career in leveraged buyouts than in the investments in start-up companies known as venture capital. Romney's one true venture deal was Staples Inc., the office supply superstore, two years after he started Bain Capital. He wasn't the first to discover Staples; another Boston venture firm introduced him to Staples founder Tom Stemberg.

In "Where the Wild Things Are," the masterpiece among masterpieces of the late Maurice Sendak, the word that first summons magic is a simple "his": "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind / and another," the opening pages read. Not " a wolf suit"; certainly not "the wolf suit his grandmother gave him for his birthday. " The wolf suit is a given. It already exists, and the story is already underway. This was Sendak's imaginative genius. In the wake of his death last week at age 83, the conventional thing to say about his work has been that it brought...

From the bully pulpit of his New York Times column, Paul Krugman has been explaining why numbers matters since 1999. The unabashed liberal took the Bush administration to task, but he hasn't exactly let the Obama administration off the hook, as his new book, "End This Depression Now" makes clear. The Nobel laureate is in town Monday night for a sold-out event sponsored by the Harvard Book Store. BOOKS: What are you reading now? KRUGMAN: The thing with gadgets — I have a Kindle and an iPad — is that I tend to have several things going at once.

He cannot remember what was in the contest jar - balls or jellybeans or other objects - but Celtics guard Ray Allen clearly recalls the prize he received as a first-grader at his Oklahoma elementary school. "I won three books," Allen said with a smile. "I remember I felt so proud that I won those three books, those books were mine. " Allen traces his love of reading to that moment, and it continues today, as he uses the pleasures of a good book to ease the boredom of long road trips or soothe a particularly bad loss.

A s Pico Iyer puts it, he moves between different environments more quickly than most people. For example, the intrepid, reflective travel writer had just left his home in Japan, stopped over in Hawaii, and landed in Santa Barbara, Calif., to visit his mother. Iyer will be on this coast to discuss his new book about Graham Greene, "The Man Within My Head," on Feb. 2 at 4:30 p.m. at Wellesley College's Newhouse Center for the Humanities and at the Harvard Book Store on Feb. 3 at 7 p.m. BOOKS: What is your favorite Graham Greene book?

In case you're wondering, Walter Isaacson isn't staying awake at night wondering who will play the lead in the big-screen version of his best-selling book, " Steve Jobs . " In fact, it sounds like Isaacson couldn't care less about the movie, which is being written by Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin . (There's also an unpromising TV movie in the works starring Ashton Kutcher - yes, Demi Moore 's shaggy-haired ex - as the Apple cofounder.)...

Having studied typesetting and typography at Simmons College (in another century), having worked in a pressroom, and having been a corporate librarian, I found Leah Price's Ideas piece intriguing and provocative (" Other ways to use a book ," May 6). As Paul Krugman states in the Bibliophiles interview in the same edition, "The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for, but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for. " As an avid reader, I maintain that books are primarily for reading, and as I have reinterated...

The author of a self-published diet book that advocates skipping breakfast and taking cold baths has agreed to lucrative deals with British and U.S. publishers. Grand Central Publishing announced Tuesday it has acquired Venice A. Fulton's "Six Weeks to OMG," the object of a multi-day auction. Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin UK, won rights for the book in Britain, where "Six Weeks" has been a word-of-mouth hit. Literary agent Richard Pine, who represented Fulton, said in a statement that the Grand Central deal was worth seven figures and that terms with Michael Joseph were...

Carol Burnett's next book will likely inspire tears along with laughter. The beloved actress and comedienne has an agreement with Simon & Schuster for a memoir about her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, who died of cancer in 2002 at age 38. The publisher announced Tuesday that Burnett's book, 'Carrie and Me," is expected in April 2013. The memoir will be a "funny and moving" story of Burnett's relationship with her daughter, an actress and writer who appeared on stage in the musical "Rent" and on such television shows as "Touched by an Angel" and "The X-Files.

Actress Garcelle Beauvais is planning to share life lessons through a series of children's books. A statement released Monday says the "Franklin & Bash" star has an agreement with Stranger Comics for three books that will "address identity issues relevant to many children today. " The series will be called "I Am. " The first book, "I Am Mixed" with co-author Sebastian A. Jones, is coming out this fall. It will tell of a brother and sister and their mixed ethnicities. A second book will be about children of divorce.

Summer is weeks away, but the fall book season has already started. "Buzz Books 2012" is a free e-book that came out Monday and features excerpts from 33 upcoming works, including Neil Young's memoir, fiction by Dennis Lehane and Junot Diaz and a young adult novel by David Levithan. "Buzz Books 2012" was compiled and released by Publishers Lunch, an influential online industry newsletter. The book's title refers to the "Buzz Books" panel at publishing's annual convention, BookExpo America, when editors discuss anticipated titles for the fall.

Early in the novel that bears his name, David Copperfield recalls the one thing that kept him happy as a child: books. His father was dead, his stepfather cruel, but in his tiny upstairs bedroom he found comfort in literary characters like Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe. Copperfield would picture himself as a favorite hero or fantasize about faraway lands. Every night, as the other children played outside, he would sit in bed—"reading," in his words, "as if for life. " When we think about reading today, we do so in Copperfield's terms: It's an act we perform alone and with imagination, one that helps us...

The Friends of the  Holmes Public Library's annual book sale is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 2 at the public library on Plymouth Street. The event will feature, books, DVDs, music CDs, and children's games, with proceeds benefiting library programs. Donations for the sale will be accepted during library hours until June 2. Hours are 12 noon to 8 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The library is closed on Sunday. 

As Judy Collins says, she was "born productive. " That personality trait has translated into more than 40 albums, seven books, and her own record label. At 73, she still performs roughly 100 times a year. The most recent fruit of her seemingly inexhaustible labor is "When You Wish Upon A Star," a 2011 children's book that comes with a CD of Collins singing . . . you guessed it. BOOKS: What are you reading currently? COLLINS: "Winter King" by Thomas Penn about Henry VII. It's one of the best books I've read on the Tudors.