Citadelles & Mazenod Review by David Starkey Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of Gerhard Richter. Like anyone who has visited art museums over the years, I’ve seen plenty…
Category: Art & Music
Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays by Joe Bonomo
Georgia Review by David Starkey At the bottom of the record sleeve of the original vinyl LP pressing of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed is a message…
The Norton Lectures Centenary Editions
Harvard Review by David Starkey The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University are, if not the most famous, then certainly among the most famous lectures in American letters. Established…
Orlando: A Graphic Novel by Virginia Woolf and Susanne Kuhlendahl
Helvitiq Review by David Starkey Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, a novel about a male Elizabethan aristocrat who, at the age of 100, turns into a woman, has inspired a…
This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle
MCD Review by George Yatchisin If the claim “songs are poetry” drives you batty, John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days will give you fits. Darnielle…
The Lies of the Artists: Essays on Italian Art, 1450-1750 by Ingrid D. Rowland
MIT Press Review by David Starkey The Lies of the Artists is a clever title for a book with the subtitle Essays on Italian Art, 1450-1750, but it seems to…
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…
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…
Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza
Norton Review by David Starkey Living in the Present with John Prine, the new book by Tom Piazza, seems like it shouldn’t work. Piazza’s encounters with Prine were too scattered…