Celadon Books Review by Brian Tanguay Several years after the fall of Saigon, Susan Lieu’s parents fled Vietnam to escape suffocating Communist rule. Leaving was an enormous risk filled with…
Author: Brian Tanguay
Places We Swim California: A Guide to the Best Rivers, Lakes, Waterfalls, Beaches, Gorges, and Hot Springs by Caroline Clements and Dillon Seitchik-Reardon
Hardie Grant Review by Brian Tanguay California’s geographic diversity and beauty has long inspired seekers, dreamers, and people of capacious imagination. The state’s many natural wonders dwarf our human stature…
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Norton Review by Brian Tanguay Whether he’s working as a war photographer or fixer, betting his last chips at the blackjack table, or pursuing handsome young men, Maali Almeida can’t…
The Berman Murders: Unraveling the Mojave Desert’s Most Mysterious Unsolved Crime by Doug Kari
Rowman & Littlefield Review by Brian Tanguay Unsolved murders are commonplace in some parts of the world. People disappear, bodies are dumped, and overwhelmed, under-resourced or corrupt officials refuse to…
Soil: The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
Simon & Schuster Review by Brian Tanguay Gardening and mindfulness cannot help but go hand in hand. The work of planting and tending a garden, whether in a suburban yard…
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Brian Tanguay In my reading over the past thirty years I’ve come across numerous references or quotes attributed to Frantz Fanon, but I’ve yet…
Getting to Know Death: A Meditation by Gail Godwin
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Gail Godwin published her first novel, The Perfectionists, in 1970 and her most recent, Old Lovegood Girls, in 2020. In the years between, Godwin was…
An Interview with Alison Rose Jefferson
By Brian Tanguay When Alison Rose Jefferson was a graduate student at USC she studied under the late Kevin Starr, probably the best known historian of California. Like Starr’s, Jefferson’s…
My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine by Sami Hermez with Sireen Sawalha
Redwood Press Review by Brian Tanguay When Great Britain was granted responsibility for Palestine under a League of Nations mandate in 1920, it limited Jewish immigration in order to maintain…
Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era by Alison Rose Jefferson
University of Nebraska Press Review by Brian Tanguay History is a curious thing, sometimes all around us and unavoidable and at other times hidden from view, obscured by time and…