Reviews
100 posts
A Singular Woman
For many, Ann Dunham is known as the mother of the 44th U.S. president who happened to be white, and that’s just about all they know about her. In A Singular Woman, Janny Scott retrieves Dunham from the bin of misrepresentation and presents an accomplished woman.
The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season
The millstone in The Grind is professional baseball. The grain it grinds are the men and women who either play the game, are players' wives, or have a specific role that makes the game possible.
Rain Clouds and Waterfalls
Not all coming-of-age stories are quite as tender as Piper Templeton’s novel Rain Clouds and Waterfalls. The symbiotic relationship among story, character, action, and mood heighten a reader’s desire to finish this book in one sitting.
Ripley, Reprised
Although there's a lot going on under the surface of this slim novel, Tyler's Last is, first and foremost, a lot of fun, an absurd, cleverly-plotted romp across continents with generous helpings of sex and violence along the way. It's a brilliant parody, and it's also much more than that.
A Map of Betrayal
Throughout his thirty years as a CIA agent spying for the People’s Republic of China, Gary Weimin Shang, the protagonist in Ha Jin’s psychological novel A Map of Betrayal, betrays…
The Sound of Things Falling
There is this about the novel The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez: The push and pull between reason and emotion, choice and chance, life and death—a trio of diametrical pairings played against each other in the life of the narrator, Antonio Yammara.
On Lucky Shores
In On Lucky Shores, Kerry Donovan introduces guitarist, singer, drifter Chet Walker. When we first meet Walker, he’s walking the Rocky Mountains, away from his troubled past and to, he…
Reading Obama
James T. Kloppenberg has written an important book that demystifies Barack Obama. In his book, Reading Obama, Kloppenberg reveals a man who is deeply embedded in the American political and cultural tradition of civic virtue.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Introverts need less outside stimulation than extroverts. They shut the door while extroverts keep it open. Introverts work slowly and deliberately, whereas extroverts work quickly and multitask. Introverts’ nervous systems…