Parlor Review by H. L. Hix The title of Matthew Cooperman’s new poetry collection, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless, indicates by its very structure one strong…
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Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik
Scribner Review by George Yatchisin Perched in a cultural place between Ryan Murphy’s Bette and Joan and Craig Seligman’s Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me, Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz…
A Tipsy Fairy Tale: A Coming of Age Memoir of Alcohol and Redemption by Peter E. Murphy
Toplight Review by Walter Cummins Peter Murphy relates the story of his adolescent and youthful perpetual drunkenness in the second person, addressing the person whose life he explores as “you”…
The Chutnification of History: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Penguin Essay by Brian Tanguay I first read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie thirty years ago, but hadn’t thought about the book again (though in that time I have read…
Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer
Rosetta Review by Walter Cummins Most of us tend to consider the Middle Ages and those who inhabited those distant centuries victims of an inferior world that we’re fortunate to…
31 Outstanding Poetry Books from 2024 – Alcalá to Zarin
Reviews by David Starkey Every year since 2014, I’ve set aside a couple of months to sit down with what amounts to a long shelf of of poetry published in…
The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss
Penguin Review by David Starkey I first saw Adam Moss’s The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing in a bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, and immediately, like Wallace Stevens’s…
A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space by Peter Selgin
Regal House Review by Walter Cummins Peter Selgin’s Boy’s Guide is in many ways a deceptive novel. From its playful title and lively accounts of the adolescent hi-jinks of the…
Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay No journalist that I’m aware of has chronicled the rise of the Christian right as assiduously and comprehensively as Katherine Stewart has. From her first…
Playground by Richard Powers
Norton Review by David Starkey In some ways, Richard Powers’ new novel Playground is a double bildungsroman, showing us the youth and early adulthood of Todd Kean—white, a native of…