Review by Jack Smith Jack Remick, novelist, poet, and nonfiction writer, arranges his current book according to calendar dates, beginning with January 5 and ending on June 16—or, beginning in…
Category: Nonfiction
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Review by Brian Tanguay The cover photograph for the third edition of Angela Davis: An Autobiography, published in 2021 by Haymarket Books, was taken in November 1969 by an unnamed…
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021 by Margaret Atwood
Review by Walter Cummins Many readers of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale probably assume the abuses and restrictions inflicted on Offred and other women were products of Atwood’s dystopian imagination.…
The Man Who Tasted Words by Guy Leschziner
Review by Walter Cummins The title case study of neurologist Guy Laschziner’s exploration of “the strange and startling world of our senses” doesn’t appear until the final chapter. James, now…
Free The Press: The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It by Brian J. Karem
Review by Brian Tanguay In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman sounded a warning about media ownership and the danger to the public when it’s fed a…
To Hell with It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno by Dinty W. Moore
Review by George Yatchisin If you’ve even wondered why the hell we came up with hell, this is the book for you. Dinty W. Moore knows of hell well, and…
To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change by Alfred W. McCoy
Review by Brian Tanguay What factors contribute to the rise and fall of empires, and what characteristics distinguish an empire from a world order? In To Govern the Globe, American…
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick
Review by David Starkey Nathaniel Philbrick’s greatest successes as an author have come revisiting America’s Revolutionary War-period, where he has explored events like Bunker Hill, Washington’s victory at Yorktown, and…
A Field Guide to White Supremacy Kathleen Belew and Ramon Gutierrez, Editors
Review by Brian Tanguay When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, there was a perception that the United States had crossed a line and put the worst excesses of…
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…