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California Review of Books

Our heart is in California, but our interests are everywhere.

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  •   Tuesday, June 16, 2026
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Recently Reviewed

Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World by Patrick Wyman

Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson by Ted Geltner

News and Notes

News and Notes

Politics

Washington Is Burning: Corruption and Lies in the Age of Trump by Andrew Cockburn

The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them by Aziz Rana

Fiction Reviews

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

Talking to the Wolf by Rebecca Chace

Body Double by Hanna Johansson, translated by Kira Josefsson

Agnes Lives! by Hallie Elizabeth Newton

Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World by Patrick Wyman

Harper Review by Walter Cummins While reading Lost Worlds I discovered an article reporting a prediction in Nature Cities that by 2100 15,000 American cities will suffer a severe loss…

Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson by Ted Geltner

Starting from Paterson by Garret Keizer

When The World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine by Francesca Albanese, Translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

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California Review of Books appreciates the bookstores in our communities and encourages you to support your local independent bookshop. Our links connect to bookshop.org, a website that partners with independent booksellers across the country.  CRB receives a small percentage of sales through this site.

California Review of Books offers readers smart, concise and timely reviews of new books, along with regular reviews of older books that we think deserve another look. While we will consider reviewing any good book published anywhere in the world, we admit to having a special fondness for work published in our home state. As we say: Our hearts are in California, but our interests are everywhere. More about us here. 

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