Review by Walter Cummins In her latest book, Shanda, Letty Cottin Pogrebin revisits the early and mid-twentieth century obsession with covering up family scandals that, if revealed, would destroy the…
Tag: Review by Walter Cummins
Hidden Cargoes by Chris Arthur
Review by Walter Cummins Hidden Cargoes—like Chris Arthur’s previous eight essay collections—is a book that can change your life, not so much your behaviors and beliefs but how you relate…
A Storm in the Stars by Don Zancanella
Review by Walter Cummins The presence of Mary Godwin Shelley opens and closes Don Zancanella’s intimate portrayal of the circle around Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Storm in the Stars. The…
Code of Silence: Sexual Misconduct by Federal Judges, the System that Protects Them, and the Women Who Blew the Whistle by Lise Olsen
Review by Walter Cummins The lengthy subtitle to Lise Olsen’s exposé explains what the book is all about but doesn’t reveal the outcome of the long process that followed the…
Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise by Jack Parlett
Review Essay by Walter Cummins Jack Parlett made his initial visit to the gay village of Cherry Grove on Fire Island in 2017 with his friend Celine by walking a…
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt
Review by Walter Cummins Samantha Hunt subtitles The Unwritten Book an “Investigation.” The connotation of that word suggests a systematic analysis of clues. But what Hunt has really produced is…
Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer
Review by Walter Cummins Eliot Schrefer’s Queer Ducks is a revolutionary book, one that upends longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of sex in the animal kingdom, with implications…
Our Little World by Karen Winn
Review by Walter Cummins Our Little World is in several ways a deceptive novel, cleverly constructed. The opening chapters told from the perspective of pre-teen Bee—the nickname she prefers over…
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021 by Margaret Atwood
Review by Walter Cummins Many readers of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale probably assume the abuses and restrictions inflicted on Offred and other women were products of Atwood’s dystopian imagination.…