Review by Brian Tanguay As the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments and tumult over critical race theory makes evident, American history is contentious and unsettled, with nostalgia and…
Category: Scroll
Francis Bacon: Revelations by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Review by David Starkey Francis Bacon: Revelations is a monumental book: the press release claim that it was “ten years in the making” doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. The notes…
Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From The Revolution to Reconstruction By Kate Masur
Review by Brian Tanguay Prior to reading Until Justice Be Done by Kate Masur, a historian who teaches at Northwestern University, I assumed that the critical period in the struggle…
Gilded Age Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America’s Golden Age by Cecelia Tichi
by George Yatchisin If you’ve ever wondered how historical nonfiction can be dry like a martini and not dry like a textbook tome, you need to pick up Cecelia Tichi’s…
The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America by Adam Serwer
Review by Brian Tanguay When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016 he made many promises, from rebuilding America’s infrastructure to reducing the federal deficit to replacing the Affordable…
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm
Review by David Starkey Janet Malcolm, who died on June 16, 2021, typically referred to herself as a journalist. While that’s certainly an honorable occupation—and working for The New Yorker,she…
The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax
Review by Brian Tanguay On the coast of California where I live drought has been a constant feature of the past twenty years. Enough rain some years made us forget,…
We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters with Bob Carrau and Cristina Mueller
Review by George Yatchisin In Charles Laughton’s fantastic 1955 fairy tale noir Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum’s curdled preacher is infamous for having “love” and “hate” tattooed across the…
2021 Poetry Month Reviews: April 1 -7
By David Starkey Back in 2014, when I was reviewing books for the Santa Barbara Independent, I proposed an offbeat idea to my editor. I would offer one very short…