Category: Book Reviews

June 18, 2010

Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir by D.J. Waldie **** (of 4)

A quirky recounting of the birth of one of America’s first post-war suburbs: Long Beach. Written by a city councilman who has lived his entire...

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June 18, 2010

A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson *** (of 4)

Johnson is an anti-Semitic summofabitch. He blames the victim at times. He seems incredulous that the Jews didn’t recognize Christ as part of the Holy...

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June 18, 2010

Heat by Bill Buford ** (of 4)

Buford does his best to make Mario Batali into an eccentric, bigger-than-life, Artiste comparable in status to Michaelangeolo, DaVinci, and Jackie Gleason, but in the...

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June 17, 2010

To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever by Will Blythe *** (of 4)

One of the great first chapters in literature. Blythe’s book is a rant about basketball, specifically Duke vs. North Carolina. At the book’s opening he...

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June 17, 2010

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth W. Farnea ** (of 4)

In the late 1950’s Elizabeth Farnea’s new husband traveled to a small rural village in southern Iraq to do graduate research on an irrigation project....

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June 17, 2010

Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat ** (of 4)

The book is a biography of a tough iron-clad tugboat that makes its way from the coast of Newfoundland into the deadly winter storms of...

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June 17, 2010

Goodbye Darkness by William Manchester *** (of 4)

One of Manchester’s best. A memoir about his role in WWII marines in Pacific theater.

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June 17, 2010

Going with the Grain by Susan Seligson ** (of 4)

Eight travel stories about bread in Morocco, Jordan, Brooklyn, the Wonder Bread factory in Massachusetts and so forth. Seligson writes well enough. Her stories are...

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June 17, 2010

Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost *** (of 4)

In the style of Bill Bryson, self-effacing and laugh aloud funny, Troost describes his adventures on the Pacific isles of Vanuatu and Fiji. He leaves...

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June 17, 2010