Belknap-Harvard University Review by Brian Tanguay I confess to not having given much thought to the historical origins of free speech before reading Fara Dabhoiwala’s marvelous history, What Is Free…
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Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin
Doubleday Review by David Starkey 2025 was the year of the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere, but it was also the 50th anniversary of Springsteen’s first great album:…
The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins by Sonny Rollins, Edited by Sam V.H. Reese
New York Review Review by Walter Cummins I’ve been listening to Sonny Rollins’ saxophone for decades, including one live performance with bad acoustics that he still managed to overcome, and…
A Desert Between Two Seas by A. Muia
Georgia Review by Paul Willis A. Muia’s richly entangled grouping of fourteen short stories, A Desert Between Two Seas, explores the afterlife of the Spanish missions in Baja California. While…
The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog
Penguin Review by George Yatchisin Who better than Werner Herzog, the Bavarian mad genius, to take us on a heady time-travelling exploration on what truth might mean/be/permit? The Future of…
Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress by Roy Scranton
Stanford Review by Walter Cummins I wish Impasse had been written when my wife was still alive. The book would have provided so much information and so many ideas to…
Hitler and My Mother-in-Law by Terese Svoboda
OR Books Review by Walter Cummins Terese Svoboda could have begun the title of her latest book with a number of other famous or familiar names—Goebbels, Goering, Martha Gellhorn, H.V.…
Repetition: A Novel by Vigdis Hjorth, Translated by Charlotte Barslund
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay It’s late November in Norway and the days are cold and short. A woman and her dog occupy a small cabin in a remote, forested…
10 Best Books of 2025
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…
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins A Guardian and a Thief is chaotic novel, filled with surprising turns and ironic shifts, with characters whose plans constantly backfire, causing accidental but often…