Quiet Storm
/Jazz composer Terence Blanchard’s score movingly complemented Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke. David Meadow evaluates whether the music stands alone in the album A Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina.
Read MoreVain Offerings
/In The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs reduced learning to the memorization of trivia; now in The Year of Living Biblically he reduces religious faith to growing a beard. Steve Donoghue, in turn, reduces A.J. Jacobs.
Read MoreThe ‘Ol Battle Axe
/A poem by Josh Lefkowitz
Read MoreImagination as Witness
/Chad Reynolds muses on the power of storytellers to model and even change reality: the harsh reality of Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip and Stephen Marche’s strange new world in Shining at the Bottom of the Sea.
Read MoreTribal Failings
/Greg Waldmann wraps his head around The Suicide of Reason and comes away wishing Lee Harris hadn’t tried to talk reason off a ledge.
Read MoreOne Encounter: On Packing Two Bags for Mexico
/In our regular feature, Scott Esposito expands on the sublime agony of filling a suitcase with an entire year’s worth of books.
Read MoreRichard Russo’s Mirror on America
/Thomaston, the setting of his new novel Bridge of Sighs, is the most diverse and complicated town Richard Russo has yet created. Sam Sacks navigates its vivid highways and byways.
Read MoreCross-Dressing Septuagenarian Self-Medicating Skateboarders of Southeast Bergen County, Unite!
/Steve Donoghue reviews pollster-guru Mark J. Penn’s Microtrends, a book that sheds light on the campaign mentality of our most powerful politicians. The weak of stomach must consider themselves duly warned.
Read MorePeer Review: Kernels of Truth
/In our regular feature, Hugh Merwin tucks in to the reviews of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which alternately acclaim and castigate the bellwether bestseller.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: I Could Wake Up in Nirvana and Laugh
/In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the life and letters of John Jay Chapman, an eloquent American wit now forgotten, whose writings once provoked and delighted an enthusiastic public.
Read MoreThe Second End of the War
/The American Revolution’s neat conclusion at Yorktown is a familiar story from the history books. Thom Daly reads Perils of Peace as Thomas Fleming’s noble if flawed attempt to add more detail to our easy picture of events.
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