Books

Book Review: “In Their Names” — Mapping “A Hierarchy of Harm”

July 25, 2025
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“In Their Names” argues that the best way to help victims of crime is to create circumstances that will diminish the chance that they will become victims again.

Book Review: Rachel Hadas'”Pastorals” — Everything We Want Poetry To Do

July 24, 2025
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Rachel Hadas’s book of prose poems is a set of meditations grounded in a life well lived and much observed, an experimental field for examining the nature of [human] potentialities.

Book Review: “Mark Twain” — The Life of a Champion of Liberating Irreverence

July 18, 2025
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At its best, Mark Twain emerges in this biography as much a live wire as ever: brash, outspoken, and overflowing with exasperating contradictions.

Book Review: “The Hard Work of Hope: A Memoir” — A Guide to Blue Collar Community Organizing

July 14, 2025
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On the hard wooden benches of a jail in Lowell, dialoguing with his street-fighting antagonists, we sense the emergence of organizer Michael Ansara’s strategy for working-class political action.

Book Review: “The Slip” — An Epic Exploration of the Elasticity of Identity

July 10, 2025
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“The Slip” raises issues of race and entitlement, as well as the malleability of identity, all in one big, sloppy, and occasionally gorgeous package.

Book Review: “The Power of Adrienne Rich” — An Aesthetic and Political Force

July 9, 2025
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Poet Adrienne Rich’s journey serves as a model for meeting the challenge posed for artists and the rest of us today, confronted with the rise of authoritarian forces in America.

Poetry Review: Words into Truth — Henri Cole’s “The Other Love”

July 8, 2025
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There are reassuring lyrics here that suggest that, no matter what terror comes along, our noble charge is to fight to the end, joyously.

Children’s Book Reviews: A Celebration of Science and Scientists

July 6, 2025
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In a time when the work of scientists is itself endangered, these two picture books provide detailed and fascinating insights into how science helps us live in the modern world.

Book Review: “Via Ápia” — Life in Brazil’s Lower Depths

July 1, 2025
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Hearing the novel’s poignant voices, we can’t help but think that in many respects the plight of poor young men in the ’hood is everywhere alike.

Poetry Review: Ode to Sisterhood — Barbara Henning’s “Girlfriend”

June 28, 2025
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Chronicling acts of feminist sisterhood, “Girlfriend” memorializes a mutual support system that has been among the backbones of American life.

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