Viking Review by Walter Cummins As a fan of mysteries, especially those with academic settings, I was drawn to the description of Rebecca Makkai’s latest title. It offered situations that…
Tag: California Review of Books
The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins Emmanuel Kant relished fine wines and gourmet meals. Werner Heisenberg thought profoundly as he strolled through a park in winter. Jorge Luis Borges was devastated…
August Wilson: A Life by Patti Hartigan
Simon & Schuster Review by Brian Tanguay August Wilson’s cycle of ten plays, one set in each decade of the 20th century, which include the critically acclaimed Joe Turner’s Come…
Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the ’80s by Gary Gulman
Flatiron Review by George Yatchisin Gary Gulman is the kind of comedian you figured had a book in him, given his love of words and language that helped him craft…
The Talk by Darrin Bell
Henry Holt Review by David Starkey Darrin Bell’s The Talk joins James Spooner’s The High Desert as the second superb memoir published within a twelve month’s span about growing up…
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
Knopf Review by David Starkey The cover of Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma is well-chosen. It shows the short, solid and tanned torso of Pablo Picasso beneath the three-dimensional…
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Zadie Smith published a piece in The New Yorker about her efforts to ignore “the long shadow” of Charles Dickens (“On Killing Charles Dickens”) when…
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua
Haymarket Review by George Yatchisin It’s not lost on me that I’m reading Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility as I take a fuel-guzzling flight…
Passing for White
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo (Simon and Schuster), The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (Berkeley), “Passing” from…
Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder, trans. by Paulette Møller
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Although Sophie’s World was first published in Norwegian more than thirty years ago and since then has been translated into close to…