(Liveright) Review by David Starkey Even the grimmest climate change novels usually contain a glimmer of humor, and books like Lydia Millet’s The Children’s Bible contain passages that are downright…
Tag: California Review of Books
True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times by Robert Greenfield
(Crown) Review by Brian Tanguay There are many ways to describe Sam Shepard, but the one word that immediately comes to mind for me is protean. Playwright. Actor. Director. Screenwriter.…
The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker
Black Cat Review by Walter Cummins In its opening section Martin Riker’s The Guest Lecture appears to be a critical study in disguise, a consideration of John Maynard Keynes based…
Putting Word to Something for Which There Are No Words: An Interview with Cynthia Hogue
H. L. Hix In this conversation, H. L. Hix asks after poet Cynthia Hogue’s most recent collections, Contain (Tram Editions, 2022) and instead, it is dark (Red Hen, 2023). H.…
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
Riverhead Books Essay by Brian Tanguay This past February marked the fiftieth anniversary of the armed standoff between the US Marshall Service, FBI, and members of the American Indian Movement…
General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz
Parlor Review by Catherine Abbey Hodges I can’t remember when I last read a book of poems that I’d call suspenseful. Donna Spruijt-Metz’s new poetry collection, General Release from the…
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Sarah Bakewell begins Humanly Possible by delineating the characteristics of humanism and then goes on to describe how these ideas emerged and were developed through…
Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering by Scott A. Small
Crown Review by Walter Cummins One of the frequent plaints that emerges when two or more people of my age get together is lamentation over what we’ve been forgetting, primarily…