Review by David Starkey For those of us who love Joan Didion’s writing, we who can imagine her arched eyebrow as she crafts another perfectly turned phrase that is both…
Category: Genres
Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South by Margaret Renkl
Review by David Starkey Living blue in the red states is no easy matter, but New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Margaret Renkl, whose beat is the “flora, fauna, politics…
Bedtrick by Jinny Webber
Review by Kimberley Snow Bedtrick by Jinny Webber is her third novel about Alexander Cooke, a stage actor in Elizabethan England. The first book, The Secret Player, chronicles how a…
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Review by David Starkey Like the narrators of Kazuo Ishiguro’s two most famous novels—Stevens of Remains of the Day and Kathy H. of Never Let Me Go—Klara of his latest…
Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays by Dewitt Henry
Review by Jack Smith Henry’s newest collection of autobiographical essays, going back over twenty-five years, takes us from beginnings to endings. As the title suggests, this book is going to…
Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard
Review by George Yatchisin There’s an honored and honorable tradition of writers writing to explain why they write, from George Orwell to Joan Didion to Annie Dillard. Jo Ann Beard,…
How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Review by Brian Tanguay As the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments and tumult over critical race theory makes evident, American history is contentious and unsettled, with nostalgia and…
Francis Bacon: Revelations by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Review by David Starkey Francis Bacon: Revelations is a monumental book: the press release claim that it was “ten years in the making” doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. The notes…
Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From The Revolution to Reconstruction By Kate Masur
Review by Brian Tanguay Prior to reading Until Justice Be Done by Kate Masur, a historian who teaches at Northwestern University, I assumed that the critical period in the struggle…