MAUGHAM’S CHOICE OF KIPLING’S BEST (324 pp.)—Doubleday ($3.95). “The star of the hour,” said Henry James in 1890, when Rudyard Kipling was only 24. “Too clever to live,” said Robert Louis Stevenson.
The choreographer and director Akram Khan’s reimagining of Kipling’s fable updates the message but leaves out the fun. By Brian Seibert Christopher Benfey’s “If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American ...