Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Karen Hao’s exposé of the tensions and reversals at the multi-billion company OpenAI reads like a satire of organizational follies, a topic often mocked in…
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Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
Viking Review by David Starkey It’s the specter that haunts the lives of every happy, long-married couple: one of them suddenly dies. In the case of Geraldine Brooks’s memoir Memorial…
The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them by Aziz Rana
University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay Why do Americans revere the Constitution? Why do many of us believe that this founding document, written by mortal and fallible men…
Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams
Dzanc Books Review by Brian Tanguay The Gulf region of the Middle East is home to the largest number of migrants per capita of any place on the planet. Many…
The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life by Sophia Rosenfeld
Princeton Review by Walter Cummins In The Age of Choice, Sophia Rosenfeld, an academic historian, joins the perspectives of psychology and sociology to her historical presentation of developments in recent…
Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra by Ericka Verba
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay Most of what I’ve learned about Chile has come from reading novels by Chilean writers, studying the country’s political fortunes since…
Insectopolis: A Natural History by Peter Kuper
Norton Review by David Starkey Peter Kuper’s book-length comic, Insectopolis: A Natural History, begins with an entomologist and her brother walking to the New York Public Library to see an…
Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels
Doubleday Review by David Starkey The subtitle of Elaine Pagels’s new book, Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, isn’t meant to question whether Jesus existed—Pagels finds plenty of…
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Flashlight’s nineteen sections, each focused on a situation in the life of a central character, are tour de forces, the situations inventive,…
An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life by Michael N. McGregor
Monkfish Review by Linda Lappin In An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life, Michael McGregor, writer, university professor, inveterate traveler, former fire fighter and Rick Steeves’ tour…