Review by George Yatchisin Think of Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses as a whydunit. Beyond admitting how much he influenced her as a writer/journalist/activist, Solnit was also moved to learn of…
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Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya
Review by Walter Cummins For me, the essential advice Kieran Setiya offers in Life Is Hard is related to the distinction he makes between telic and atelic activities in the…
Novelist as Vocation by Haruki Murakami
Review by Walter Cummins Novelist as a Vocation—Haruki Murakami’s collection of ten essays on novel writing, first published in Japan in 2015 but not translated into English until 2022—suggests that…
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Review by Walter Cummins The character of Gwendolen Kelling provides a form of ballast to Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety. It’s not that she can prevent the criminality and murders—bodies…
Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain by Charles Leerhsen
Review by Elizabeth Starkey The introduction to Charles Leerhsen’s Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain concludes with a recap of one of those piquant Tony voice-overs,…
Foundlings by DeWitt Henry
Review by Jack Smith Essayist, memoirist, fiction writer, prize-winning novelist, and founder and editor of Ploughshares, DeWitt Henry has gained a solid reputation for his contributions to several literary forms,…
Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Review by Walter Cummins In her latest book, Shanda, Letty Cottin Pogrebin revisits the early and mid-twentieth century obsession with covering up family scandals that, if revealed, would destroy the…
Home: A Story of Emigration by Anthony Stevens
Review by Linda Lappin In this lyrical, hybrid narrative combining novel, documentary, autobiography, and diary, British author, Anthony Stevens pieces together a chapter of his family history: his great grandparents’…
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire by Jonathan M. Katz
Review by George Yatchisin Forget about the butterfly effect, it seems the last 130 years of U.S. foreign involvement should be called the Butler Effect. By that I refer to…
Hidden Cargoes by Chris Arthur
Review by Walter Cummins Hidden Cargoes—like Chris Arthur’s previous eight essay collections—is a book that can change your life, not so much your behaviors and beliefs but how you relate…