Sam Tanenhaus began work this week as the new editor of the New York Times Book Review. “Since his appointment a few weeks ago, Tanenhaus’ likes and dislikes, his authorship of a prize-winning biography of anti-Communist icon Whittaker Chambers and an uncompleted one of William F. Buckley — all but his hat size has been parsed and glossed with the earnestness of old-time Kremlinology. Literary insiders have done everything to divine his standards except, typically, to read a whole book Tanenhaus wrote on the subject in 1984.”