Penguin Review by George Yatchisin Who better than Werner Herzog, the Bavarian mad genius, to take us on a heady time-travelling exploration on what truth might mean/be/permit? The Future of…
Category: Nonfiction
Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress by Roy Scranton
Stanford Review by Walter Cummins I wish Impasse had been written when my wife was still alive. The book would have provided so much information and so many ideas to…
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…
Savings And Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank by Justene Hill Edwards
W. W. Norton & Company Review by Brian Tanguay The failure of banks and savings and loan institutions has a long history in the United States. Most people know something…
Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement by Brandon M. Terry
Belknap/Harvard Review by Brian Tanguay Americans generally frame the Civil Rights era as beginning with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and ending with the assassination of…
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – And How It Shattered a Nation – by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Viking Review by Mark Mansour Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “1929” is a compelling and vivid chronicle of the most notorious financial crash in history, skillfully blending drama and meticulously researched history…
Karl Marx In America by Andrew Hartman
University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay As a very young man I attempted to read Capital by Karl Marx. Because I lacked the intellectual tools and experience of…
Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia by Brian Barth
Astra House Review by Brian Tanguay In June 2024, the United States Supreme Court ruled that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping in public, even if they have nowhere…
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
PublicAffairs Review by Walter Cummins It’s a common assumption that the technological inventions and innovations of recent centuries have increased wealth and living standards throughout the world. As a reality…
The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work by Sam Quinones
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay It’s not often I start a review with, “I loved this book,” but in the case of The Perfect Tuba by Sam Quinones it’s the…