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…
Category: Nonfiction
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…
What Nails It by Greil Marcus
Yale Review by George Yatchisin Trying to write a book review about essays in which one of our preeminent social critics, Greil Marcus, explores why he writes criticism…well, I’ve already…
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
4th ESTATE London Review by Brian Tanguay During his long career as a foreign correspondent, Robert Fisk won the Orwell Prize, the Martha Gellhorn Prize, and was seven times named…
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M. Bordewich
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay The demise of John W. Stephens is emblematic of the challenge that faced Ulysses S. Grant and the proponents of Reconstruction. In the eyes of…
Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer
Rosetta Review by Walter Cummins Most of us tend to consider the Middle Ages and those who inhabited those distant centuries victims of an inferior world that we’re fortunate to…
The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss
Penguin Review by David Starkey I first saw Adam Moss’s The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing in a bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, and immediately, like Wallace Stevens’s…