Culture Vulture

Music Feature: “Shared Spaces” — Breaking the Silence

May 9, 2023
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So much of David Sakura’s narrative in Shared Spaces reminded me of the stories of other traumatized groups.

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Book Review: “Dinners With Ruth” — Always Nice But Rarely Incisive

September 30, 2022
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Like a Hallmark movie, Dinners with Ruth is an engaging and entertaining story, with episodes of great pathos. It is an upbeat, easy-to-read gift book, which is undoubtedly what its publisher intended.

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Book Review: “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” — A Brave and Heartrending Story

March 15, 2022
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This is a profoundly disturbing memoir about a subject that hits close to home for many readers.

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Book Review: Sarah Ruhl’s “Smile: The Story of a Face”

October 16, 2021
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This is the voice of a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, patient, and author who wrote a memoir on her own terms. I can’t wait for Sarah Ruhl’s next play.

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Book Review: “Mike Nichols: A Life” — Portrait of a Protean Artist

March 4, 2021
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This nearly 600-page text is a closely detailed, comprehensive portrait by a biographer riveted, as many of us are, by his charismatic subject.

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Book Review: “Fallout” — Memorably Detailing the Defeat of the Hiroshima Cover-Up

September 8, 2020
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I heartily recommend M.M. Blume’s excellent Fallout, which ably synthesizes large amounts of archival, historical, and biographical material from three continents.

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Book Review: “Twilight of Democracy” — A Slim Investigation of the “Clerks”

July 21, 2020
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Twilight of Democracy made me yearn (uncharacteristically) for hard scientific data to supplement  Anne Applebaum’s punditry about the pundits.

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Film Review: “There Are No Lions in Tel Aviv” — The Story of Rabbi Doolittle

June 19, 2020
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This is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, one that I plan to view again and again.

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Book Review: “Here We Are” — Philip Roth’s Boswell

May 25, 2020
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This glimpse into the relationship of two American Jewish writers makes for good reading during the pandemic: an intelligent, gracefully written memoir of friendship.

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Book Review: “These Fevered Days” — Exploring an Enigma

February 19, 2020
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From the first page of Martha Ackmann’s new book on Emily Dickinson, you know you’re reading something entirely different.

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