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…
Category: Memoir & Biography
House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr. by Marion Orr
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay By the mid-1970s, Charles Diggs Jr. was arguably one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives. The most…
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…