Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay As I read Omar El Akkad’s scathing polemic exposing the moral shortcomings of the Western world order, I was reminded of the Fire Next Time…
Category: Featured Reviews
Use for a few selected items.
Golden State: The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik
Mariner Review by David Starkey The first time I really noticed the bumper stickers on the cars in front of me was when I began driving, in the late 1970s.…
Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism by Brooke Harrington
Norton Review by Brian Tanguay The world of elite and oligarchic money is shrouded in secrecy. A series of leaked documents — the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Pandora Papers…
The ISMs Series, Edited by Larry Warsh
Princeton University Press Review by David Starkey I first saw one of the ISMs books in a museum bookstore—the Whitney’s, I think. Pale blue, beautifully made and about the size…
Mendell Station: A Novel by J. B. Hwang
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Among the many things I liked about Mendell Station by J.B. Hwang is its realistic portrayal of working-class life. Delivering mail is a working-class occupation;…
Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya
Ballantine Review by George Yatchisin It’s no coincidence that the two main subjects of Sameer Pandya’s second novel Our Beautiful Boys are family and violence. Set in a vaguely Santa…
The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell
Belknap / Harvard Review by David Starkey “Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet,” professors Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell state in the opening sentence of…
1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times by Ross Benes
University Press of Kansas Review Brian Tanguay Although I lived through the era of their ascendancy, I never understood the immense popularity of professional wrestling, Jerry Springer, the Beanie Baby…
Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons by Brittany Friedman
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay Scholar Brittany Friedman begins Carceral Apartheid with a black and white photograph of her maternal grandmother. The year is 1939, and…
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay Elif Shafak writes with her heart as much as her imagination. Her eye and ear seem to gravitate toward characters whose stories are rarely told:…