Natalie Wexler

Natalie Wexler is the author of two novels, The Mother-Daughter Show (Fuze Publishing, December 2011) and the award-winning A More Obedient Wife. Her essays and feature articles have appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, the American Scholar, the Gettysburg Review, and other publications. She has also worked as a temporary secretary, a newspaper reporter, a Supreme Court law clerk, a legal historian, and (briefly) an actual lawyer. She lives in Washington, D.C.


14 entries by Natalie Wexler

Book Review

The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting

This detailed account of a dying art is too quick to dismiss our most personalized form of communication.

Book Review

Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do

A practical manual for instilling a love of books in children.

Book Review

The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession

An engaging account of how the hurdles faced by beleaguered educators are nothing new.

Book Review

Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom

A baby boomer reflects on his life as a student.

Book Review

The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age

Too radical for their time, these women even confused Karl Marx.

Book Review

The Signature of All Things: A Novel

The author of Eat, Pray, Love brings readers a 19th-century story of ideas.

Book Review

Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy

Forget the cluelessness of 17-year-olds. It’s the parents who need coaching in this novel about the anxious world of college-essay preparation.

Book Review

Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married

Two women who flouted their families’ wishes and married men who played key roles in the Revolutionary War.

Book Review

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

The life of Margaret Fuller, whose 19th-century struggles and triumphs still resonate today.

Book Review

Christopher Tilghman

The Right-Hand Shore

The author revisits Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and its slave-holding past, in a prequel to his debut novel Mason’s Retreat.

Book Review

Paul Tough

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

This recipe for educating kids turns to time-tested ideas about the importance of instilling virtues that drive personal achievement.

Book Review

Chris Bohjalian

The Night Strangers: A Novel

This novel brews up a mixture of witches, ghosts and guilt for the protagonist, a pilot who failed to avert a catastrophic plane crash.

Book Review

Dorothy Wickenden

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

From the records of one family’s history, a tale of hard living in the wilds of Colorado in 1916.

Book Review

Jehanne Wake

Sisters of Fortune

Marrying well in 19th-century Europe, through the eyes of Baltimore’s famous Caton sisters.