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…

Talking All Night: The New York Poets – Interviews, Photographs, Letters by Mark Hillringhouse

Serving House Review by David Starkey In an interview with Mark Hillringhouse, poet Anne Waldman responds to a question about the literary scene with a quote that could apply to…

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

Norton Review by David Starkey It’s appropriate that the painting on the cover of Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival may, or…

Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous, Scandalous Story of Aimee Semple McPherson by Claire Hoffman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by George Yatchisin Why and how masses of people fall under the thrall of a magnetic person are the kinds of questions that sadly keep…

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Viking Review by David Starkey It’s the specter that haunts the lives of every happy, long-married couple: one of them suddenly dies. In the case of Geraldine Brooks’s memoir Memorial…

Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams

Dzanc Books Review by Brian Tanguay The Gulf region of the Middle East is home to the largest number of migrants per capita of any place on the planet. Many…

Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra by Ericka Verba

University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay Most of what I’ve learned about Chile has come from reading novels by Chilean writers, studying the country’s political fortunes since…

An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life by Michael N. McGregor

Monkfish Review by Linda Lappin In An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life, Michael McGregor, writer, university professor, inveterate traveler, former fire fighter and Rick Steeves’ tour…

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Random House Review by Brian Tanguay The wheels of justice turn slowly. Hadi Matar, now 27, was sentenced this past February for his August 2022 knife attack on Salman Rushdie…

Swerve by Laurie Blauner

Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins A swerve is not a deliberate choice but rather the result of a last-second panic, an instantaneous response to a sense of threat, twisting…