Books As its provocative title suggests, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? (Scientific American, 320 pages, $16) is a book unafraid of topics most of us don’t typically have the balls to bring up. It   More

Books In 1962, 20th Century Fox made a movie that almost bankrupted the studio and changed Hollywood forever. The epic Cleopatra was shot on location in Italy and Egypt at a cost of more than $40 mill   More

Books In How Should a Person Be? (Henry Holt, 306 pages, $16.50), the narrator, Sheila, not yet 30 and fresh from a failed marriage, struggles to write a play about women as she drifts lethargically a   More

Books There are a lot of books about mountaineering disasters, but few center on people with stories like Chhiring Sherpa’s. Buried in the Sky (W.W. Norton & Company, 304 pages, $26.95) is Peter Zuc   More

Books The last few miles are rough for Scott Jurek. As Eat & Run (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 272 pages, $26) comes to a close, we find the Michael Jordan of ultra-running in a bad way. Abandoned by    More

Books Greg Rucka is a serial series writer. Aside from penning big-name comic-book titles for DC and Marvel, the Portland-based author is responsible for the excellent Atticus Kodiak novels (about a s   More

Books Dell Parsons, the narrator of Richard Ford’s conflicted new novel, Canada (Ecco, 432 pages, $27.99), tells us right off about the story’s major event. His parents became unlikely bank robbers.   More

Books Sometimes a Great Movie: Paul Newman, Ken Kesey and the Filming of the Great Oregon Novel (Nestucca Spit Press, 158 pages, $30) is a failure. Harsh words, but its author might agree. Matt Love, a    More

Books James Bernard Frost’s new zine-style novel, A Very Minor Prophet, couldn’t be any more Portland if it were topped with bacon and served at a food cart by a man wearing an ironic T-shirt. This    More

Books Fed up as aides debated whether he should mention civil rights in his first speech to Congress after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson once asked, “What the hell’s the presi   More