Crown Review by Brian Tanguay The latest collaboration between Harvard University professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is equal parts civics tutorial, history lesson, comparative analysis, warning and remedy. A…
Tag: Review by Brian Tanguay
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…
The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Obscene Obsession by Kelsy Burke
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In the Preface to The Pornography Wars, Kelsy Burke explains her methodology as a sociologist, writing that she doesn’t assume that others who hold beliefs…
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
Scribner Essay by Brian Tanguay When the conservative supermajority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, it overturned a…
Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay A black boy, just young enough to walk through town alone, hears a truck rumbling down the dirt road near a cafe. The truck pulls…
The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
(Ballantine Books) Review by Brian Tanguay If you’re drawn to novels with a broad sweep of time and place, The Wind Knows My Name, the latest from Isabel Allende, deserves…
A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization by John Perlin
(Patagonia) Review by Brian Tanguay The first edition of John Perlin’s A Forest Journey was published in 1989. Its unique synthesis of history and science quickly marked it as a…
Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
(Crown) Review by Brian Tanguay What Bryan Stevenson (author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative) is to racial inequality in the criminal justice system in America,…
Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
Crown Review by Brian Tanguay One anecdote in Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You captures the essence of Lucinda Williams, the acclaimed American singer/songwriter. In 1993, Williams won…
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
Morrow Review by Brian Tanguay I can’t remember reading a work of fiction where bits of prose took me out of the story as often as happened while reading Yellowface…