(Crown) Review by Brian Tanguay There are many ways to describe Sam Shepard, but the one word that immediately comes to mind for me is protean. Playwright. Actor. Director. Screenwriter.…
Author: Brian Tanguay
The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century by Peniel E. Joseph
(Basic Books) Review by Brian Tanguay Like many Americans, I saw the election of Barack Obama in 2008 as a long awaited turning point in race relations in this country.…
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
Riverhead Books Essay by Brian Tanguay This past February marked the fiftieth anniversary of the armed standoff between the US Marshall Service, FBI, and members of the American Indian Movement…
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell
(Penguin) Review by Brian Tanguay Discovering a new author is one of the unparalleled joys of reading. Like the box of chocolates made famous by Forrest Gump, one never knows…
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
(Harper Perennial) Review by Brian Tanguay I’m not sure why it took me so long to read Louise Erdrich. I’ve seen her name on lists of best books in literary…
Liberation Day by George Saunders
(Random House) Review by Brian Tanguay If you read Tenth of December or Lincoln in the Bardo, you know that George Saunders isn’t afraid to challenge readers and make them…
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
(Bloomsbury) Review by Brian Tanguay “False information need not be coherent to be effective, and the specters of vanished liberty and tyrannical government regulation are easy enough to conjure.” So…
Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe by Ian Kershaw
(Penguin Press) Review by Brian Tanguay In Personality and Power, historian Ian Kershaw poses and answers fundamental questions of historical analysis about twelve individuals who significantly impacted — for good…
The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks
(Knopf) Review by Brian Tanguay The year is 1971. The place is Florida, south of Orlando. 81-year-old Harley Mann sits on the porch of the house he has lived alone…
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridharadas
Review by Brian Tanguay Calling people out for their lack of political awareness or insufficient wokeness isn’t the problem with the political left; the problem is not calling people in.…