Category: America

July 14, 2010

Double Whammy by Carl Hiassen *** (of 4)

Vintage Hiassen. The murderers and bad guys are Florida tele-evangelists and unscrupulous land developers, assisted by rednecks with brains the size of ‘possums. The good...

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July 14, 2010

Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline *** (of 4)

I once read that we read mysteries to learn about another place or time or culture as much as for the mystery itself. Devil’s Corner...

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July 14, 2010

Daddy’s Girl by Lisa Scottoline **** (of 4)

It’s the usual Scottolini fare: shrimpy, gutsy, wise-cracking lawyer (Penn professor of law in this case) without a decent boyfriend gets caught up in violent...

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June 29, 2010

Parrot and Olivier in America *** (of 4)

At the end of the 18th Century, following the French Revolution, Olivier, a French aristocrat modeled on Alexis de Tocqueville arrives in America accompanied by...

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June 22, 2010

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon **** (of 4)

Hard to say if this book plays in Peoria, but Chabon prepares a perfect rendition of two genres: 1940s noir detective novels and Yiddish culture....

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June 22, 2010

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth *** (of 4)

No writer captures anxiety, apprehension, fear, and hopelessness better than Roth. I cannot think of a happy or fulfilled character in a single one of...

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June 21, 2010

The Lost: A search for six of six million, by Daniel Mendelsohn **** (of 4)

Nearly sixty years after the author’s great-uncle, wife, and four daughters disappeared in the Holocaust, the author searches for their memories. Beginning with his grandfather’s...

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June 21, 2010

Joy Comes in the Morning by Jonathan Rosen *** (of 4)

An assistant Reform Rabbi slowly loses touch with God while she falls in love with the son of a Holocaust survivor who slowly finds God...

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June 21, 2010

Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander **** (of 4)

Auslander carries all of Woody Allen’s neuroses into the 21st Century and does it with panache. This autobiography is a therapeutic disgorging of growing up...

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June 21, 2010