There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay Elif Shafak writes with her heart as much as her imagination. Her eye and ear seem to gravitate toward characters whose stories are rarely told:…

American Mother: A Life Reclaimed by Colum McCann and Diane Foley

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay James Foley was the first American citizen executed by ISIS. He was decapitated in Northern Syria in August 2014. The act was filmed. The perpetrators…

Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North by Kathleen Lippa

Dundurn Press Review by Brian Tanguay What most impressed me about Arctic Predator, journalist Kathleen Lippa’s book about the crimes of notorious sexual predator Edward Horne, is her determination to investigate…

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan

Basic Books Essay by Brian Tanguay Many of the books and articles I’ve read about the Middle East during the past year make passing reference to the Ottoman Empire, often…

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In early March 2022, at Berenike, a barren spot on the shores of the Red Sea, a team of archaeologists made several remarkable finds. From…

Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East by Robert Fisk

4th ESTATE London Review by Brian Tanguay During his long career as a foreign correspondent, Robert Fisk won the Orwell Prize, the Martha Gellhorn Prize, and was seven times named…

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M. Bordewich

Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay The demise of John W. Stephens is emblematic of the challenge that faced Ulysses S. Grant and the proponents of Reconstruction. In the eyes of…

The Chutnification of History: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Penguin Essay by Brian Tanguay I first read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie thirty years ago, but hadn’t thought about the book again (though in that time I have read…

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay No journalist that I’m aware of has chronicled the rise of the Christian right as assiduously and comprehensively as Katherine Stewart has. From her first…

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi

Metropolitan Books Review by Brian Tanguay Of the many books Rashid Khalidi has written about Palestine, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is by far his most personal one. Khalidi…