It’s still the early part of the season, the good part, when summer hours kick into effect (for the luckiest among us), before the tourist invasion starts and the city starts to heat up and emit that special odor that’s uniquely New York in August. There’s no better time to be in the city for 
Picks to perk up your inner literatus By Allen Houston New York shows its literary stripes during the summer months, when every bookstore and bar seems to sweat an author or reading series from its pores. Here are our choices for some of the best events to help you get back in touch with your 
Bike Snob NYC, The Enlightened Cyclist Bike Snob NYC has long looked at the New York cycling scene through his own unique sense of humor and betterment. His new book deflates some of the traditional smugness associated with biking in the city and the joys and dangers of bike commuting in the city. Your 
Anyone who thinks of libraries as repressively quiet zones filled with musty books need only walk into the St. Agnes branch of the New York Public Library system to be instantly proven wrong. While the Upper West Side branch boasts its fair share of quiet spots as well as, of course, books, it is also a bright, modern community space where locals 
Miles David is by no means an ordinary writer. A resident of the Upper East Side, David has recently completed Saving the President, a novel about Margaret Massey, a fictional U.S. president who takes the reins of the country during a period that oddly parallels the current Obama administration. Massey faces some issues that are 
Last week, author Steven Rea presented his latest book, Hollywood Rides a Bike (Angel City Press, $20), at Tribeca’s Adeline Adeline. The night attracted a very classy audience of cycling aficionados who sipped wine and watched, captivated, as Rea went through a collection of photographs from the book. Hollywood Rides a Bike is chock full 
By Courtney Holbrook Whether he’s researching the strange methods of 19th-century scientists or on the trail of 17th-century pirates, author, historian and journalist Richard Zacks has an eye for the juicy bits in history. Now, the bestselling author of The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd and three other books has a new 
At 51, New York Times reporter Patricia Cohen has hit the ubiquitous halfway point for age. But instead of getting older quietly, Cohen decided to write a biography of middle age in her first book, In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age (Scribner). She starts at the beginning, roughly a century ago, when middle 
