Review by David Starkey As he appears in Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, Ada Calhoun’s father, The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, seems like kind…
Category: Memoir & Biography
Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Review by Walter Cummins In her latest book, Shanda, Letty Cottin Pogrebin revisits the early and mid-twentieth century obsession with covering up family scandals that, if revealed, would destroy the…
Home: A Story of Emigration by Anthony Stevens
Review by Linda Lappin In this lyrical, hybrid narrative combining novel, documentary, autobiography, and diary, British author, Anthony Stevens pieces together a chapter of his family history: his great grandparents’…
Hidden Cargoes by Chris Arthur
Review by Walter Cummins Hidden Cargoes—like Chris Arthur’s previous eight essay collections—is a book that can change your life, not so much your behaviors and beliefs but how you relate…
Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise by Jack Parlett
Review Essay by Walter Cummins Jack Parlett made his initial visit to the gay village of Cherry Grove on Fire Island in 2017 with his friend Celine by walking a…
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt
Review by Walter Cummins Samantha Hunt subtitles The Unwritten Book an “Investigation.” The connotation of that word suggests a systematic analysis of clues. But what Hunt has really produced is…
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom
Review by David Starkey Those who can remember the grief they felt for young, terminally ill Johnny Gunther when they first read John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud, will be…
You Are All a Part of Me by Lisa del Rosso
Review by H. L. Hix In her very brief “Foreword” to You Are All a Part of Me, Lisa del Rosso declares that the essays in the book “are about…
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Review by David Starkey While Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth is, in part, about the new national holiday inspired by the events of June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, when Major…
Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays by Dewitt Henry
Review by Jack Smith Henry’s newest collection of autobiographical essays, going back over twenty-five years, takes us from beginnings to endings. As the title suggests, this book is going to…