Roberta Silman

Book Review: Art Critic Peter Schjeldahl — Connecting Readers to the World in a New Way

May 22, 2020
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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.

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Book Review: “The Planter of Modern Life” — A Biography of an Agricultural Visionary

May 6, 2020
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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.

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Book Review: “Franci’s War” — A Very Relevant Holocaust Memoir

March 31, 2020
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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.

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Book Review: “Tightrope” — A Wake-up Call for America

March 11, 2020
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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.

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Book Review: “A Grief Sublime” — A Lasting Testament to the Power of Words to Sustain and Heal

February 7, 2020
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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.

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Book Review: “Blowout” — A Devastating Vision of What is at Stake

November 22, 2019
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This is a brilliant book that comes at a propitious time in our country’s history.

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Book Review: “Lampedusa” — Writing “The Leopard”

October 9, 2019
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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.

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Theater Review: “Time Stands Still” — After Trauma

September 25, 2019
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In this seemingly modest, but beautifully constructed and deeply moving play, Donald Margulies has tackled some of the thorniest questions of our time.

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Book Review: A Memorial to Lucette Lagnado’s Two Remarkable Memoirs

August 29, 2019
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To have such a remarkably courageous voice as Lucette Lagnado’s silenced forever at such a young age is, simply, not fair.

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Book Review: “In Extremis” — A Flawed Heroine

July 5, 2019
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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.

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