Books
Jack Taylor has always been a version of the reluctant detective, but now he seems more impotent than ever — distracted, beat down, and very tired.
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Frolic and Detour contains a few poems that I judge to be instant classics of English-language poetry.
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This is a brilliant book that comes at a propitious time in our country’s history.
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Biographer James Kaplan was aided by the assistance of Irving Berlin’s two elder daughters, and that makes this biography particularly valuable.
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Because Eliza Griswold’s poems often take place in war zones, she’s always provocative — even when she is tendentious.
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When someone recommended to Steven Hassan he write a volume called The Cult of Trump, “it just seemed like the most important book I could write, frankly.”
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Two recent biographies take very different approaches as they revel in the wild lives and examine the distinctive songs of two of rock music’s most enigmatic figures: Lou Reed and Warren Zevon.
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“You can read Frederick Douglass forever and still just encounter new things, new ideas, new passages, new phrases. He’s that kind of writer. It’s like reading Emerson or even Shakespeare.”
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Virginie Despentes novel reads like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia mashed with Don Quixote and set in contemporary Paris.
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About the post-Reagan era, Boston Phoenix and Boston After Dark editor, Arnie Reisman, observes: “Everything went to sleep, and while we were sleeping, the Republican Party grew six more heads.”
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The 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: The Institution Continues