Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Being thrust into a different place and time is one of the pleasures of reading fiction. Sometimes the place is inside the mind of a…
Tag: Review by Brian Tanguay
Truth And Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope by Daniel Ellsberg, Edited by Michael Ellsberg and Jan R. Thomas
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The late Daniel Ellsberg is perhaps the most famous whistle-blower in American history. When he copied and leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 — a…
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy by Steven J. Ross
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay I read The Secret War Against Hate when federal immigration agents were terrorizing the citizens of Minneapolis, which made the experience eerie and chilling. Steven…
Railsong: A Novel by Rahul Bhattacharya
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Charulata Chitol is an unlikely heroine. The motherless daughter of a railway worker, Charu, as she’s known, lives with her father and brothers in India’s…
Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom by Greta Lynn Uehling
Rowman & Littlefield Review by Brian Tanguay Because of the passage of time and the velocity at which events unfold, it’s understandable that Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea has fallen…
I Could Be Famous: Stories by Sydney Rende
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The epigraph to Sydney Rende’s debut collection of short stories is a quote from Sheila Heti’s novel, How Should A Person Be? “How should a…
Transformed by India: A Life by Stephen P. Huyler
Pippa Rann Review by Brian Tanguay I was intrigued by Stephen P. Huyler’s description of his early travels, long before smartphones, GPS, language translation, and social media. Travel was more…
What Is Free Speech? The History Of A Dangerous Idea by Fara Dabhoiwala
Belknap-Harvard University Review by Brian Tanguay I confess to not having given much thought to the historical origins of free speech before reading Fara Dabhoiwala’s marvelous history, What Is Free…
Repetition: A Novel by Vigdis Hjorth, Translated by Charlotte Barslund
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay It’s late November in Norway and the days are cold and short. A woman and her dog occupy a small cabin in a remote, forested…
10 Best Books of 2025
The following list was decided after consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journal’s most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin. As…