Shambhala Review by David Starkey Those of us who are not practicing Buddhists, but are still “Zen-curious,” can turn for modest enlightenment to classics like Alan Watts’ The Way of…
Category: Home Page
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee
Norton Review by David Starkey I bought my copy of Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism after visiting an exhibition at the National Gallery…
What Nails It by Greil Marcus
Yale Review by George Yatchisin Trying to write a book review about essays in which one of our preeminent social critics, Greil Marcus, explores why he writes criticism…well, I’ve already…
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
4th ESTATE London Review by Brian Tanguay During his long career as a foreign correspondent, Robert Fisk won the Orwell Prize, the Martha Gellhorn Prize, and was seven times named…
10 Best Books of 2024
The following list was decided after consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journal’s most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin. As…
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M. Bordewich
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay The demise of John W. Stephens is emblematic of the challenge that faced Ulysses S. Grant and the proponents of Reconstruction. In the eyes of…
the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless by Matthew Cooperman
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…
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”…