University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay The city of Santa Barbara, California, has always traded on its unique location, tucked snugly between the Santa Ynez mountains and the…
Category: Nonfiction
1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times by Ross Benes
University Press of Kansas Review Brian Tanguay Although I lived through the era of their ascendancy, I never understood the immense popularity of professional wrestling, Jerry Springer, the Beanie Baby…
Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons by Brittany Friedman
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay Scholar Brittany Friedman begins Carceral Apartheid with a black and white photograph of her maternal grandmother. The year is 1939, and…
99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life by Adam Chandler
Pantheon Review by George Yatchisin A few weeks into the oligarchical hell of “Trump II: This Time We Leave the Country Stripped on Blocks,” Adam Chandler’s 99% Perspiration: A New…
Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North by Kathleen Lippa
Dundurn Press Review by Brian Tanguay What most impressed me about Arctic Predator, journalist Kathleen Lippa’s book about the crimes of notorious sexual predator Edward Horne, is her determination to investigate…
A Sunny Place for Shady People: How Malta Became One of the Most Curious and Corrupt Places in the World by Ryan Murdock
Trinity Review by David Starkey Ryan Murdock’s A Sunny Place for Shady People: How Malta Became One of the Most Curious and Corrupt Places in the World feels like two…
The Countryside: Ten Rural Walks Through Britain and Its Hidden History of Empire by Corinne Fowler
Scribner Review by Walter Cummins I’m fortunate to have taken several of Fowler’s ten rural walks in Britain along with a number of similar routes. But my ignorance limited me…
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In early March 2022, at Berenike, a barren spot on the shores of the Red Sea, a team of archaeologists made several remarkable finds. From…
The Blue-Cliff Record by David Hinton
Shambhala Review by David Starkey Those of us who are not practicing Buddhists, but are still “Zen-curious,” can turn for modest enlightenment to classics like Alan Watts’ The Way of…
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee
Norton Review by David Starkey I bought my copy of Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism after visiting an exhibition at the National Gallery…