Book review: “Maskerade” by Terry Pratchett
In his more than four dozen novels, Terry Pratchett was often silly, witty, wacky and goofy. But he was also, always, serious. Pratchett’s delightfully humorous and endlessly readable books weren’t [...]
Book review: “Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century” by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph
Dorothy Day — that radical of 20th century radicals, that voice of conscience in the face of a self-centered, self-indulgent, greedy American culture, that embracer of the neediest, [...]
Book review: “Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance: New Negro Writers, Artists and Intellectuals 1893-1930,” edited by Richard A. Courage and Christopher Robert Reed
In November, 1904, Fannie Barrier Williams, activist, iconoclast, orator and writer, led an attack on racism with a tea cup. She and other members of Chicago’s interracial Frederick Douglass Center [...]
Book review: “The Wilton Diptych: Making & Meaning” by Dillian Gordon
All art is strange, disquieting. Read Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Or attend a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear. These are idiosyncratic creations to the extreme. Nothing else quite [...]
Book review: “The Painted Word” by Tom Wolfe
The Painted Word is an essay by Tom Wolfe, originally published in Harper’s Magazine in April, 1975 and then released in June of that year as a slim book, 99 [...]
Book review: “Interesting Times” by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels have sold in the millions, so it stands to reason that there must be a lot of people who are fans of Rincewind. He [...]
Book review: “Dancing with Langston” by Sharyn Skeeter
Carrie’s husband Bill doesn’t make an appearance in Sharyn Skeeter’s Dancing with Langston until near the end of the novel. And, when he does show up at the Harlem [...]
Book review: “The Escape from Five Shadows” by Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard was in his early 30s and still learning his craft when, in 1956, he published The Escape from Five Shadows. Missing is the snappy dialogue that [...]
Book review: “The Law at Randado” by Elmore Leonard
The 29-year-old Elmore Leonard had been a professional writer for just three years when, in 1954, he published his second novel The Law at Randado. It’s a book that displays [...]
Book review: “The Art of Guido Cagnacci” by Xavier X. Salomon
Xavier X. Salomon ends his short, beautifully produced, extravagantly illustrated 2016 book The Art of Guido Cagnacci by quoting two words from a letter that two Italian luminaries exchanged nearly [...]