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,…

Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist by Marc Ribot

Review by George Yatchisin Brilliant guitarist that not enough people know by name Marc Ribot has written his first book, Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist, and all…

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…

Cuttings from the Tangle by Richard Buckner

Review by George Yatchisin Richard Buckner, songwriter, singer, can open a song with the lines “Tough is as she does, won’t you slump on over and stir my shuffle down,”…