Columbia Review by David Starkey Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene are far from household names. Granted, Hazzard was the author two widely acclaimed novels—The Transit of Venus (1980), winner of…
Author: David Starkey
Golden State: The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik
Mariner Review by David Starkey The first time I really noticed the bumper stickers on the cars in front of me was when I began driving, in the late 1970s.…
Audubon as Artist: A New Look at The Birds of America by Roberta J. M. Olson
Reaktion Review by David Starkey Before turning to Roberta J.M. Olson’s Audubon as Artist: A New Look at the Birds of America, in a gorgeously reproduced edition by Reaktion Books,…
The ISMs Series, Edited by Larry Warsh
Princeton University Press Review by David Starkey I first saw one of the ISMs books in a museum bookstore—the Whitney’s, I think. Pale blue, beautifully made and about the size…
The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell
Belknap / Harvard Review by David Starkey “Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet,” professors Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell state in the opening sentence of…
Held by Anne Michaels
Knopf Review by David Starkey California Review of Books is a bit late to the party in reviewing Anne Michaels’ Booker-nominated third novel, Held, although perhaps we may be excused…
Rome: Pedestrians Beware by Rafael Alberti (trans. and with essays by Anthony L. Geist & Giuseppe Leporace)
Swan Isle Review by David Starkey As someone who has spent a fair bit of time in the Eternal City, I can say that in order to truly love Rome,…
Memories of Distant Mountains by Orhan Pamuk
Knopf Review by David Starkey Writing in the New York Times, Dwight Garner dismissed Orhan Pamuk’s Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022 as “breezy and frictionless,” “a book of…
I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante
Penguin Review by David Starkey The paperback version of Lucy Sante’s I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition was published on January 21, 2025, the day after…
An Interview with Sonicbond Publisher Stephen Lambe
Interview by David Starkey Stephen Lambe founded Sonicbond Publishing in 2018, after spending most of his career working for independent non-fiction publishers. During his time in the industry, Lambe learned…