Reviews by David Starkey As I have every year since 2014, in 2025 I set aside a couple of months to peruse the year’s books of poetry–at least those books…
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Savings And Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank by Justene Hill Edwards
W. W. Norton & Company Review by Brian Tanguay The failure of banks and savings and loan institutions has a long history in the United States. Most people know something…
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Hogarth Review by Walter Cummins When I read The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny I hadn’t known Kiran Desai had devoted twenty years to creating the novel, but I suspected…
All These Things I Will Give to You by Robert Clinton
Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins Robert Clinton’s ekphrastic poem “Egon Schiele,” which finds words to describe how Schiele creates a painting, provides a visual equivalent to the way Clinton…
Seven Heavens Away: A Novel by Ashraf Zaghal
Anansi Review by Brian Tanguay Three Palestinian teenagers are hanging out on the streets of Jerusalem. They insult one another as teenage boys do, smoke cigarettes, and enjoy ice cream…
The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kristen Menger-Anderson
Crown Review by Walter Cummins The Expert of Subtle Revisions opens with a conundrum in a section titled “Mira,” set in Half Moon Bay, California, in 2016: “As far as…
House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr. by Marion Orr
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay By the mid-1970s, Charles Diggs Jr. was arguably one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives. The most…
Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The world Charlee Dyroff creates in her novel, Loneliness & Company, is familiar and strange at the same time. New York City has become a…
Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement by Brandon M. Terry
Belknap/Harvard Review by Brian Tanguay Americans generally frame the Civil Rights era as beginning with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and ending with the assassination of…