Book review: “Uncharted Stars” by Andre Norton
The second half of Andre Norton’s 1969 Uncharted Stars is a fast-paced chase that is one of the best extended sequences in her 200+ books. This is the section that [...]
Book review: “The Zero Stone” by Andre Norton
Some of Andre Norton’s fans consider The Zero Stone, published in 1968, to be one of her best books. I didn’t find it all that compelling although it is distinctive [...]
Book review: “Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated” by Shea Serrano, illustrated by Arturo Torres
Shea Serrano’s Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated is a bag-of-potato-chips sort of book. No, that’s not quite right. It’s the book equivalent of seven [...]
Book review: “The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and the Trojan War” by Caroline Alexander
In the Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus takes a trip to Hades where he encounters many of his former comrades from the Trojan War, including Achilles who asks him: “How could you [...]
Book review: “The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrant Out of America” by Daniel Okrent
Daniel Okrent’s newly published The Guarded Gate is about immigration. But, much more, its subject is racism. Not black/white racism although that does rear its ugly head in Okrent’s rigorously [...]
Book review: “Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China” by Jung Chang
As a world leader, Empress Dowager Cixi hasn’t had good press, nothing like, say, Queen Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria. In terms of historical reputation, those women had their gender [...]
Best books of 2019
The best books of 2019 Moby Dick by Herman Melville Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt The [...]
Book review: “Mostly Harmless” by Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless — the 5th and sort-of final installment in the series of books by Douglas Adams that he started with A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — is mostly [...]
[[[Secret book review: “P is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever: All the letters that misbehave and make words nearly impossible to pronounce” by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter]]]
Emma, this book review is for you, but don’t tell your Mom and Dad. They’d probably get all worried that a book like P is for Pterodactyl will ruin your [...]
Book review: “Josephus’ ‘The Jewish War’ ” by Martin Goodman
The odds are that you don’t have a copy of the Jewish War by Josephus in your book collection. You may never have heard of it. It was written around [...]