Category: America

January 21, 2013

The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin *** (of 5)

In a surprisingly so-so book, Jeffrey Toobin follows The Nine, his phenomenal account of the Supreme Court’s evolution from the 1970s to the Obama years, with a...

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November 15, 2012

Home by Toni Morrison *** (of 5)

An African American soldier returns from fighting in Korea with his mind in tatters. The army was integrated and ordered, but his experience was profoundly horrifying....

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October 28, 2012

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro **** (of 4)

Third in Caro’s serial biography of Lyndon Johnson, this massive volume covers Johnson’s decade in the Senate. For most of the 1950s LBJ ran the...

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September 9, 2012

Journey to Shiloh by Will Henry *** (of 4)

A Texas yarn about 7 teenagers who leave hill country to fight for the Confederate Army in the Battle of Shiloh. Tough and country-wise after...

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August 13, 2012

1493 by Charles Mann *** (of 4)

Prior to Columbus’s blundering into the Caribbean, there was negligible interchange of plants, animals, or humans between continents. Shortly thereafter the onset of large-scale globalization...

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July 8, 2012

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt *** (of 4)

A tall tale of the Old West. A pair of brothers, Charlie and Eli Sisters, with the self-importance of Keillor’s Dusty and Lefty and the...

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April 24, 2012

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka **** (of 4)

An elegy for the Japanese women who arrived in California in the early part of the twentieth century as mail-order brides to join lonely Japanese laborers. ...

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January 27, 2012

Hellhound on his Trail by Hampton Sides *** (of 4)

Hampton Sides gimmick as a writer is to start two or three parallel stories and watch as they converge in a single moment in history. ...

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January 20, 2012

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll **** (of 4)

This book changed the way I viewed the CIA. I used to believe they were ideologically driven bumblers, but after observing the careful exhibition of...

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November 20, 2011