Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
University of Chicago Press
Visual Arts Review: “Seeing Silicon Valley” — Our Future Dystopia?
This is an important book, a powerful account of the decline of California as America’s paradise.
Poetry Review: Gail Mazur’s “Land’s End” — Poems of Questions and Declarations
It’s hard to imagine many of Gail Mazur’s poems emerging from anywhere else than from inside Route 128.
Poetry Review: “Little Kisses” — Poetic Affection
Reading Little Kisses is reassuring — and that is a valuable attribute given the times we are living in.
Fuse Book Review: A Peek Inside the Palace of a Veteran French Wordsmith
Roger Grenier wears his considerable learning lightly. His writing is a graceful dance of the intellect.
Book Review: “The Democratic Surround” — Exploring the Makings of Mass Experience
Fred Turner’s counterintuitive and subtle argument in The Democratic Surround draws a direct line between the design of museum exhibitions and the Be-Ins of the Summer of Love.
Book Review: Females on the Frontier of Medicine — Healers in Early Modern Germany
In her groundbreaking study, Tufts University professor Alisha Rankin essentially revises the history of medicine by showing that women, presumed to be marginal in the development early modern medicine, were actually major players.