Review by David Starkey Those who can remember the grief they felt for young, terminally ill Johnny Gunther when they first read John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud, will be…
Author: David Starkey
Edvard Munch in Dialogue by Dieter Buchhart, Antonia Hoerschelmann and Klaus Albrecht Schröder
Review by David Starkey “Much is suggested. Little is defined,” writes Margaret Dumas of Norway’s most famous painter. One of the contemporary painters represented in Edvard Munch in Dialogue, Dumas…
The Man Who Tasted Words by Guy Leschziner
Review by Walter Cummins The title case study of neurologist Guy Laschziner’s exploration of “the strange and startling world of our senses” doesn’t appear until the final chapter. James, now…
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick
Review by David Starkey Nathaniel Philbrick’s greatest successes as an author have come revisiting America’s Revolutionary War-period, where he has explored events like Bunker Hill, Washington’s victory at Yorktown, and…
Joan Mitchell Edited by Sarah Roberts and Katy Siegel
Review by David Starkey I’m not sure when I realized that Joan Mitchell was my favorite abstract painter, but I do know it was a gradual process. Partly that time-lag…
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Review by David Starkey While Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth is, in part, about the new national holiday inspired by the events of June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, when Major…
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Review by David Starkey Richard Powers’ new novel, Bewilderment, is—despite its portrayal of a mother and son who are capable of ecstatic connection with the natural world—one of the most…
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder; Illustrated by Nora Krug
Review by David Starkey Crown published Timothy Snyder’s original, text-only version of On Tyranny in February of 2017, a little more than a month after Donald Trump took office. The…
Frick Diptych Series
Holbein’s Sir Thomas More by Hilary Mantel and Xavier F. Salomon; Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid by Margaret Iacono and James Ivory; Gouthière’s Candelabras by Edmund de Waal and Charlotte Vignon;…
The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in Search of a Genre by Tim Hannigan
Review by Linda Lappin Travel writing has been pronounced dead at various times over the last century, only to spring back with new vigor, enticing new readers to lace up…