As a talking head, George F. Will does present himself as an arid and smug and, dare I say, tight-sphinctered Caucasian. His writing, though (except for his humorless desiccations of baseball), suggests a thoughtful, erudite thinker who is the class of the comedians, flying monkeys, and holy rollers known
One of the puzzling aspects of the roiling cultural waters of late-capitalist America is that Bill Moyers, a mild, thoughtful, and well-spoken Christian, should serve as the feared left-wing demon whose presence on PBS indisputably exposes its liberal agenda. On the other hand, it makes sense that
As many commentators suggest, the idiosyncratic C.D. Wright is a school or movement of one, connecting the personal with the political (the war in Iraq, the post-Katrina debacle in New Orleans, illegal immigration, globalization/global capitalism) in her poetry. Here she gives us her 12th book, from which
Receiving a new George Pelecanos novel wreaks havoc on my well-ordered universe. I immediately set aside all but my most urgent responsibilities and appointments until I have turned the last page of his latest opus. Fortunately, his storytelling is of the page-turning species. In his latest tome, six
Having been published to accolades on distant shores, it took a while for Dermot Bolger’s harrowing and gritty depiction of late-century Dublin to make it to America (kudos to the University of Texas Press and its James A. Michener fiction series). Multidimensional storyteller Bolger gives us three young
Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater) belongs to a small but important subspecies of humanity who can translate their imaginations into vivid and compelling prose. In raw numbers their population on our planet is small—but larger than you think. As has been said in another context, the voices of fiction may be
James Lee Burke is a fine crime-story writer, and this is another one of his Dave Robicheaux novels. Most of them were set in New Orleans—which was an important character in this series—for obvious reasons, Dave and family have decamped for Montana and naturally run into thugs,
I have already enthusiastically noted the publication of Alan Furst’s 10th novel. In a recent chat with the author, he mentioned the excellence of the audio versions of his novels. In this case, Daniel Gerroll reads this iteration of Furst’s fine snapshot of middle Europe circa 1937-38.
Rocky Mountain News reporter Jim Sheeler won the Pulitzer Prize for the story on which this book is based. Marine Major Steve Beck has the onerous task of personally notifying the families of U.S. troops killed in combat. Beck and his efforts to comfort the families make for a
I confess I am intrigued that The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley, who is not someone who features an outstanding sense of humor, wrote that he couldn’t stop laughing at Seth Greenland’s (The Bones) sophomore novel. The storyline develops as Marcus Ripps takes over his brother’s dry-
