Books
As cultural critique, Curtis White’s Transcendent comes across as a modest if chilly yip of Zen resignation.
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Although science is Andrea Barrett’s springboard, she is writing fiction about the people who do scientific research and teach it: memorable people who have hearts and secrets and feelings and hopes and dreams and goals.
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Given the increasing backlash against books that promote equity and diversity, and the fact that many schools still spotlight Black history in February, here is a sampling of the many excellent Black history and biography books for children published in the past few years.
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Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel is simply dizzying, filled with texture, startling imagery, language in multiple tongues (keep Google within reach!), and it succeeds in most every respect.
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There’s no question the Beatles come out of John Higgs’ superb book Love and Let Die looking far better than James Bond. Love tends to play better than death and it’s easier to root for working class underdogs than Establishment snobs.
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This incisive, compelling, and spirited analysis of the screwball maestro’s life and oeuvre illuminates the art of an overlooked genius.
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Engagingly written by a limpid stylist, The Call of the Tribe marshals a corps of sparkling intellectuals who have in common first-hand experience of dictatorship, a commitment to individual freedom, a belief in reasonably regulated free-market economies, and a rejection of the political zealotry of religion or the doctrinaire left and right.
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The structure, plot, themes, tone, and diction of Was It For This all combine to consecrate the ordinary alongside the exceptional.
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This splendid biography of Leon Battista Alberti, beautifully produced, with a rich selection of well-placed and well-reproduced illustrations, vividly portrays one of the most complex and fascinating figures in a complex and fascinating time, one whose preoccupations are entirely relevant today.
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Book Review: “The Constitution in Jeopardy” Wrong Diagnosis and Solution
This is the Catch-22 of American constitutional politics. We the people are free to propose any structural reform we want except that they’ll all suffer the same fate: strangulation at the hands of petty politicians in Washington or the state capitals.
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