Translated from the Danish by Per Brask & Patrick Friesen Review by Walter Cummins In his Afterword, Niels Hav writes, “Poetry’s first duty is to be an intimate talk with…
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The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Review by Walter Cummins Although The Last Gift (2011) is not 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s most acclaimed novel—the Booker Prize short-listed Paradise is—it illustrates his many strengths as…
Lush Life: Food & Drinks from the Garden by Valerie Rice
Review by George Yatchisin I’d argue that the best cookbooks double as secret memoirs, often telling us more about the author than a straight-ahead account that began, “I was born…
The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski
Review by George Yatchisin It took Joe Posnanski three attempts to accomplish the feat that is The Baseball 100. When he finally pulled off the basis of what became this…
The History of Bones by John Lurie
Review by George Yatchisin John Lurie, musician, artist, reluctant actor, avatar of 1980s downtown New York City cool, makes this pronouncement fifty pages in to his fascinating memoir The History…
Bedtrick by Jinny Webber
Review by Kimberley Snow Bedtrick by Jinny Webber is her third novel about Alexander Cooke, a stage actor in Elizabethan England. The first book, The Secret Player, chronicles how a…
Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays by Dewitt Henry
Review by Jack Smith Henry’s newest collection of autobiographical essays, going back over twenty-five years, takes us from beginnings to endings. As the title suggests, this book is going to…
Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard
Review by George Yatchisin There’s an honored and honorable tradition of writers writing to explain why they write, from George Orwell to Joan Didion to Annie Dillard. Jo Ann Beard,…
Gilded Age Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America’s Golden Age by Cecelia Tichi
by George Yatchisin If you’ve ever wondered how historical nonfiction can be dry like a martini and not dry like a textbook tome, you need to pick up Cecelia Tichi’s…