Review by Brian Tanguay For artists are these the best of times or the worst of times? Has technology toppled many of the barriers that once prevented aspiring musicians, filmmakers,…
Author: Brian Tanguay
City Of A Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks
Review by Brian Tanguay Other than Kashmir or the Korean peninsula, no territory on earth is as bitterly contested as that claimed by the Jews of Israel and the Arab…
The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto By Charles M. Blow
Review by Brian Tanguay In Georgia in 2020 two US senate seats flipped from red to blue, and in the presidential contest the reliably Republican state chose Joe Biden over…
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Review by Brian Tanguay Review by Brian Tanguay I decided to read Shuggie Bain after listening to Michael Silverblatt interview the novel’s author, Douglas Stuart, on Bookworm. By the time…
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class in Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
Review by Brian Tanguay Before George Saunders turned his attention to literature he studied engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Engineers are fascinated by the way things work. In…
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
Review by Brian Tanguay The belief that markets and merit are the only way to organize society has become an article of faith in American society and culture. Over the…
Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis
Review by Brian Tanguay Kleptocracy is nothing new. Dictators and tyrants like the Shah of Iran, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and Vladimir Putin in Russia,…
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Review by Brian Tanguay For many white people in America, the work of confronting our history of racism is hard and uncomfortable, a topic to avoid or view as something…
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
Review by Brian Tanguay Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond are not the kind of men you would invite for dinner. Were you to see them coming toward you on a…
Self-Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams
A father’s hard-earned struggle to unlearn race. Until his daughter Marlow was born, Thomas Chatterton Williams had never questioned that his children would be Black like him. Marlow’s blue eyes,…