Books

Book Review: Francis Spufford’s “Nonesuch” — Magic, Mathematics, and the Blitz

March 4, 2026
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This hybrid narrative laces romantic adventure with a bit of horror, the supernatural, and mathematical derring-do—all within an increasingly realistic depiction of the times and of the people who survived them.

Book Review: Richard Hell’s “Godlike” — Punk Passion and the Gospel of Damnation

March 2, 2026
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Richard Hell is the only New York artist of the past fifty years to give Lou Reed and Patti Smith a run for their money.

Book Review: “Beckomberga” — A Haunting, Elusive Dive into Madness

February 27, 2026
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Disrepair is the leitmotif. The atmosphere throughout is dark and gray, tinting a sadness that to the narrator seems to be inexpressible.

Book Review: Losing the Flavor — Allegra Goodman and the New Jewish-American Family

February 27, 2026
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What Allegra Goodman’s stories serve up could be called a vision of Jewish American Life Lite.

Book Review: “I Give You My Silence” is Vargas Llosa’s Final, Gentle Vals — A Swan Song of Art’s Quiet Power

February 24, 2026
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Mario Vargas Llosa’s final novel is a sweet, light story about art and idealism—and its ever-present opposite, cynicism.

Book Review: Steven Underwood on the New Black Digital Renaissance — and Who Profits from It

February 21, 2026
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What you’ll think of this book will likely rest on what you make of the writer’s definition of Black digital Art.

Book Review: The Look of the Sound — The Album Art of Prestige Records

February 19, 2026
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Along with its slew of images — photos, sketches, and ephemera as well as album covers — WAIL offers what amounts to a compelling oral history of the mid-century explosion, not only of recorded jazz but of graphic design and, by extension, a burgeoning New York cultural scene.

Poetry Review: The Art of Letting Go — Gail Mazur’s “World on a String”

February 18, 2026
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The poems in :World on a String” set an example for us all of how to live, to love, to release, and to remember.

Book Review: “The Copywriter” — Of Proust, Pandas, and Poetic Inertia

February 18, 2026
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What stands out for this reader is the humor Daniel Poppick mines from the quotidian.

Poetry Review: “Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters” — Song of Pain and Praise

February 17, 2026
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Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung’s goal — achieved through tag-team lyric utterance — is a noble spirituality.

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