The month of May is turning into a catwalk of America’s greatest senior novelists. Ford’s new book is the best of the lot, though, a magnificent work of Montana gothic that confirms his position as one of the finest stylists and most humane storytellers in America.

He was the most creative and most popular independent exhibitor of silent films at a series of movie palaces (seating up to 6,000 people) in New York during the 1920s.

“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.

The rest of the details you already know: the prep school setting, some wrestling, a missing father, a career as a popular novelist, a sojourn in Vienna and, of course, a weird sexual initiation.

By Wyn Craig Wade

Unabridged, Tantor, 12½ hours, 12 CDs, $39.99; downloads: audible.com, $27.99; iTunes, $23.95

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]]> http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=b0953637972b654c397dcac0cbe19814 http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-audiobooks-for-great-listening/2012/05/08/gIQA6tOQBU_story.html?wprss=rss_books http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-audiobooks-for-great-listening/2012/05/08/gIQA6tOQBU_story.html?wprss=rss_books http://www.washingtonpost.com/Fragment/SysConfig/WebPortal/twpweb/rss/mobile/blog-entry.jpp?id=1000.4.1161433704 http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-audiobooks-for-great-listening/2012/05/08/gIQA6tOQBU_story.html?wprss=rss_books http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-audiobooks-for-great-listening/2012/05/08/gIQA6tOQBU_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-audiobooks-for-great-listening/2012/05/08/gIQA6tOQBU_search.html 1000.4.1161433704 3a8fbaa6-92e1-11e1-803f-df78569168e8 God Audible com Tue, 8 May 2012 17:37:56 EST Wed, 9 May 2012 07:05:06 EST 20120509120506 The Washington Post /2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/04/30/BookWorld/Stories/bw-audiobooks0509.xml article_story story books.dwp:content_well/story-books-leadstory3.dwc:story EOM::CompoundStory The Washington Post The dead cluster around Thomas Cromwell in this darkly magnificent sequel to “Wolf Hall.”

He keeps them with him, giving the names of his beloved wife and daughters to the falcons he flies with his king, Henry VIII, and nursing memories of his disgraced mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, whose persecutors will soon suffer Cromwell’s vengeance. Deceased enemies also linger in his thoughts: He’s forced to reconsider his hatred for his brutal father, and he can’t seem to dismiss Thomas More, whom he maneuvered to execution in 1535. More’s bitter aphorisms resurface to remind Cromwell of the dangerous path he has chosen in serving Henry’s capricious royal will.

But is the title of Lynn Sherr’s book a command, a suggestion, an exhortation? That one word on the cover leaves us in no doubt as to the focus we’ll find on the pages within. This slim volume is not about wateror exercise. It is neither history lesson nor social commentary (although, in fact, it contains some of each and much more besides). It is a love-letter to swimming, one woman’s homage to the pastime that continues to capture the hearts of young and old.

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein have been Washington fixtures for three decades. They are two of the brightest, best informed and most scholarly students of our politics. They started out together as graduate students of political science at the University of Michigan, and decades ago took up residence at the Brookings Institution (Mann) and the American Enterprise Institute (Ornstein). Both have cultivated Democratic and Republican senators and House members to help them figure out the workings of the legislative branch. They acknowledge holding liberal views themselves, but throughout their careers they have tried to uphold a scholarly, non-partisan standard. Republicans once took them as seriously as Democrats did.

By Jon Ronson

Riverhead. 275 pp. $25.95

This fascinating and humane book covers a lot of ground. Jon Ronson (“The Men Who Stare at Goats”) does indeed take a journey through “the madness industry” of his subtitle: He gets to know a diagnosed psychopath in England’s Broadmoor Hospital, interviews a former chief executive who’s become wealthy as the go-to guy when corporations want to fire people and need someone who enjoys the job, hangs out with Scientologists, and discusses pyschopathology with the man who created a widely used checklist for the condition.

Bucking the widespread decline of independent bookstores, One More Page Books opens in Arlington.

Feb. 1

English professor Alan Gribben sparks a national debate when he publishes a new edition of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” without the N-word.