Books

Children’s Book Reviews: Lighting Up Winter Holidays

December 11, 2025
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A trio of holiday stories— two celebrate friendship, one features a stagestruck chicken.

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Book Review: Rich Lives in the Musical Margins — “Dancing With Muddy” and “Before Elvis”

December 10, 2025
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Two good reads: Boston harmonica player Jerry Portnoy’s memoir is an unflinching look at life as a sideman musician; the other is a history that shows how, without the Black stars he heard in Memphis, there would have been no Elvis or rock ‘n roll as we know it.

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Book Reviews: “In a Distant Valley” and “A Chance Meeting” — Distinctively American Characters

December 8, 2025
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Two uniquely American books that will give you unexpected pleasures just when you need them most.

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Book Review: “Razzle Dazzle” Minus Some of the Sparkle — John Lahr Profiles the Stars, and Himself

December 6, 2025
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If John Lahr could learn, even in his eighties, to cut back on his own self-adoration and stop being so damned star struck, the razzle in his profiles would dazzle all the more.

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Book Review: “Corrections At Work” — – Practical Reforms for Correctional Officers, Sidestepping Abolition

December 4, 2025
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When it comes to the aberrant conditions in today’s jails and prisons, concerns such as how corrections officers are regarded by their superiors in the system, the media, and the public are beside the point.

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Book Review: The Insider’s Legacy: Malcolm Cowley and the Rise of U.S. Literature

November 26, 2025
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Literary critic Malcolm Cowley’s in-the-trenches vision of modernism deserves to extend beyond the halcyon epoch he witnessed — a case made splendidly by Gerald Howard’s biography.

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Book Review: Lea Ypi’s “Indignity” — Reimagining a Life in the Ruins of History

November 24, 2025
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This tragic, absorbing, and moving quasi-novel is best characterized as a “tour de force”.

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Book Review: Jan Kerouac’s “Baby Driver” — Storming Down the Road

November 22, 2025
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“Baby Driver” is a book in the tradition of American road literature, but it moves at a distinctly different pace.

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Book Review: “Crimean Fig” — Everything Has Its Own Soul

November 21, 2025
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The authors assembled in “Crimean Fig” demonstrate they are unafraid to speak up for Tatar language and culture, while simultaneously speaking out against Putin, unwilling to submit.

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Book Review: Writers on the Brink — “February 1933” and the Chilling Parallels to Trump’s America

November 20, 2025
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Reading “February 1933”, just ten months into Trump’s second mandate is nothing less than unnerving.

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