Good essays about art help us learn to see. Wonderful essays about the artists in our lives — which means all the artists through history, because, as Peter Schjeldahl so eloquently puts it, “all art is contemporary” —- help us learn how to live.
Book Review: “The Planter of Modern Life” — A Biography of an Agricultural Visionary
Here is a splendid biography from which you will learn things you never suspected, a book that will renew your faith in passion and what Louis Bromfield called those peculiarly American traits: integrity and idealism.
Book Review: “Franci’s War” — A Very Relevant Holocaust Memoir
Here we have the story of a young Czech woman who could not only take a piece of fabric and shape it into a gorgeous dress, but could also take her experiences during WWII and shape them into a compelling memoir.
Book Review: “Tightrope” — A Wake-up Call for America
What makes this book so necessary is that these are writers willing to state realities that members of both parties prefer to keep under the rug.
Book Review: “A Grief Sublime” — A Lasting Testament to the Power of Words to Sustain and Heal
Here is why you have to read this book: It gives proof to my faith that those beautiful lines and paragraphs created through the ages can comfort in present distress and continue to do so as one heals.
Book Review: “Blowout” — A Devastating Vision of What is at Stake
This is a brilliant book that comes at a propitious time in our country’s history.
Book Review: “Lampedusa” — Writing “The Leopard”
Steven Price creates a mid-twentieth century world that is filled with the same kind of conflicts that Lampedusa himself confronted in writing The Leopard, his great novel about nineteenth century Italy.
Theater Review: “Time Stands Still” — After Trauma
In this seemingly modest, but beautifully constructed and deeply moving play, Donald Margulies has tackled some of the thorniest questions of our time.
Book Review: A Memorial to Lucette Lagnado’s Two Remarkable Memoirs
To have such a remarkably courageous voice as Lucette Lagnado’s silenced forever at such a young age is, simply, not fair.
Book Review: “In Extremis” — A Flawed Heroine
In Extremis is required reading not only for anyone interested in war, but for anyone interested in how an unusual woman makes her way in the world.
