“Why her?” the journalist Mark Oppenheimer writes toward the end of his first biography, “Judy Blume: A Life.” “What is it about Judy and her work that won her so many millions of fans?” Partly talent ...

Shut away in a Swiss sanatorium is the man the world once knew as the greatest of dancers. For months at a time he speaks no word. He still hears the echo of War guns. His dead, dumb eyes see soldiers ...