Category: FOUR STARS ****

March 21, 2023

These Truths by Jill Lepore **** (of 4)

It is no small feat to write a history of the United States. Choose any event, say, for example the Presidency of George Washington, The...

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February 2, 2023

People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn **** (of 4)

In a series of essays, no not essays, but rather really well-done rants, Dara Horn made me pause and reconsider a lot of what I...

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January 17, 2023

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan **** (of 4)

The perfect follow up to We Didn’t Know Ourselves, Claire Keegan’s novella describes in exquisite detail the conflict between religion and morality within the mind...

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January 4, 2023

We Didn’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole **** (of 4)

The book’s subtitle is accurate: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. This history of Ireland begins in 1958, more or less, when O’Toole was born....

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December 7, 2022

Ultra by Rachel Maddow **** (of 4)

Not a book or, at least, not yet a book, but a podcast. The genius of the production is that it is ostensibly a recounting...

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November 18, 2022

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich **** (of 4)

A fictionalized account of Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, who worked as a night watchman in a factory on the Chippewa nation in North Dakota. He battled...

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October 24, 2022

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar **** (of 4)

The title says the book is a novel, but the voice is the author’s and the story is about his life. News events, timelines, and...

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August 19, 2022

River of the Gods by Candace Millard **** (of 4)

By the 1860s California had absorbed an influx of hundreds of thousands of gold miners, the southern states of the U.S. had seceded, and North...

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June 20, 2022

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan *** (of 4)

As the 19th century was drawing to a close, the photographer Edward Curtis took it upon himself to photo-document and record ethnographic information on every...

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May 31, 2022

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles **** (of 4)

Steinbeckian in scope and style, The Lincoln Highway is equal parts coming-of-age story, travelogue, American history, rumination on the inalienable properties of heroism, and inevitable...

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