University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay As a very young man I attempted to read Capital by Karl Marx. Because I lacked the intellectual tools and experience of…
Tag: California Review of Books
Long Distance by Ayşegül Savaş
Bloomsbury Review by David Starkey The themes in Turkish writer Ayşegül Savaş’s new story collection, Long Distance, are easy to identify: displacement, disillusionment, disquiet. Things don’t go the way we’d…
The Paris Express by Emma Donaghue
Summit Review by Walter Cummins Emma Donaghue succeeds in integrating multiple stories that involve a group of varied individuals on a train ride from Granville, Normandy, to Montparnasse station in…
Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia by Brian Barth
Astra House Review by Brian Tanguay In June 2024, the United States Supreme Court ruled that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping in public, even if they have nowhere…
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
PublicAffairs Review by Walter Cummins It’s a common assumption that the technological inventions and innovations of recent centuries have increased wealth and living standards throughout the world. As a reality…
The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work by Sam Quinones
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay It’s not often I start a review with, “I loved this book,” but in the case of The Perfect Tuba by Sam Quinones it’s the…
Saving Ourselves From Big Car by David Obst
Columbia Business School Publishing Review by Brian Tanguay When I lived in Tokyo many years ago, my street was just wide enough for two vehicles to pass within inches of…
Without Precedent: How Chief Justice John Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves
Bold Type Books Review by Brian Tanguay Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about the Supreme Court or how its rulings impact their lives, until the court strips away…
Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza
Norton Review by David Starkey Living in the Present with John Prine, the new book by Tom Piazza, seems like it shouldn’t work. Piazza’s encounters with Prine were too scattered…
Talking All Night: The New York Poets – Interviews, Photographs, Letters by Mark Hillringhouse
Serving House Review by David Starkey In an interview with Mark Hillringhouse, poet Anne Waldman responds to a question about the literary scene with a quote that could apply to…