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…
Category: Nonfiction
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…
Saving Ourselves From Big Car by David Obst
Columbia Business School Publishing Review by Brian Tanguay When I lived in Tokyo many years ago, my street was just wide enough for two vehicles to pass within inches of…
The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria Anand
Washington Square Review by Walter Cummins Pria Anand starts The Mind Electric by relating two childhood fascinations—her grandfather’s neurological symptoms from post-polio syndrome and, before she could read, the fantastical…
The World After Gaza: A History by Pankaj Mishra
Penguin Press Review by Brian Tanguay Pankaj Mishra is a writer of capacious erudition which he has demonstrated in eight books of non-fiction, two works of fiction, and dozens of…
Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation by Marla A. Ramirez
Harvard Review by Brian Tanguay Immigration has been a contentious issue in the United States for a long time, and at numerous points in American history has motivated intense passions…