Readers here and abroad waited this week to see if the Nobel literature jury considered Yanks too “ignorant” and “isolated” to deserve the prize.

Larry McMurtry’s latest book, titled simply Books, is a memoir of his many decades as a book dealer. One of his favorite activities, he writes, has always been buying books. Lots of books.

How is the father of psychoanalysis connected to the founder of the Beatles?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are only the latest of a long list of Americans who have reached out to besieged Tibetans.

Cosmetics magnate Leonard A. Lauder has made the biggest gift the Whitney Museum has ever received.

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell has learned that even generosity can need an explanation.

Cornwell gave $1 million donation to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City this month.

But worried that some of her remarks about the gift might be read as demeaning police officers, Cornwell last week spent $250,000 to set the record straight.