Books

Book Review: Through a Text, Too Darkly — The Life and Oration of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

March 15, 2022
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Overall, the ITRL is an improvement over earlier efforts, but it falls short of expectations, particularly when it comes to providing a way into the world of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola for those beginning the journey.

Author Reconsideration: The A, B, and C of Sue Grafton

March 12, 2022
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The conveniently tidy endings do turn killing into an entertainment. They also allow us to briefly believe in redemption. And that is not the vainest of hopes.

Book Review: “We Uyghurs Have No Say” — When Truth Telling Becomes Subversive

March 12, 2022
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What do the words of an imprisoned Uyghur dissident tell us about the desperate plight of China’s ethnic minorities today?

Book Review: “Hemingway’s Widow” — Not a Pretty Story

March 12, 2022
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We now have a book that virtually closes the circle on Hemingway’s women, a biography that will be treasured by the author’s fans and scholars.

Book Review: “Literature for a Changing Planet” — A Crash Course

March 11, 2022
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Martin Puchner is stumped because what is called for is a genuinely radical rethink about what role literature and literary studies should play in avoiding the global meltdown to come.

Book Review: From Rome in 63 BCE — A Warning for Our Perilous Political Moment

March 8, 2022
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This most timely new translation of Sallust’s The War Against Catiline describes the ancient version of a phenomenon we will recognize instantly: a cold-blooded grift transmuted into terrorism posing as patriotism.

Book Review: “To Govern the Globe” — An Epic History of World Hegemony

March 7, 2022
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Alfred McCoy’s brilliant history examines the evolution of world orders leading up to Pax Americana and the current decline of the United States.

Visual Arts Book Review: “Florine Stettheimer: A Biography” — One of American Art’s Greatest Enigmas

March 7, 2022
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The volume’s overarching goal is to restore Florine Stettheimer to what the biographer sees as her rightful reputation as one of the great American artists of the 20th century.

Arts Remembrance: Jack Kerouac at 100 — A Conversation with John Sampas

March 7, 2022
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Jack Kerouac would have turned 100 on March 17. A 2014 conversation about the writer with his literary executor, the late John Sampas.

Book Review: “Foreverland” — Bound Until Death

March 4, 2022
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Here’s to Heather and Bill, and this lively saga…

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