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> <channel><title>California Literary Review &#187; Non-Fiction Reviews</title> <atom:link href="http://calitreview.com/category/non-fiction-reviews/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><link>http://calitreview.com</link> <description>An arts and culture magazine.</description> <lastBuildDate>Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:12:32 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1</generator> <item><title>Book Review: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis</title><link>http://calitreview.com/23163</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/23163#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:46:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Peter Bridges</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[American History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Cold War]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twentieth century]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=23163</guid> <description><![CDATA[George Frost Kennan was one of the most influential of all American diplomats, as well as an historian and writer who won two National Book Awards and two Pulitzer Prizes.  It was Kennan who, first in his “long telegram” sent from the American embassy at Moscow in February 1946, and then in his anonymous “X” article in <em>Foreign Affairs</em> the following year, laid out for policy-makers, and then for the American public, the true nature of Stalinism and Soviet policy at a time when some still took a benevolent view of our wartime Soviet ally.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/23163/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex: What’s Wrong With Modern Movies? by Mark Kermode</title><link>http://calitreview.com/22883</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/22883#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:00:36 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jem Bloomfield</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=22883</guid> <description><![CDATA[His opinions, though held intensely and vocally, are often unpredictable: he has long maintained <em>The Exorcist</em> to be the greatest film ever made, but has also in the past championed the work of Zac Efron and the <em>Twilight</em> franchise, and has recently taken to insisting that <em>Jaws</em> is actually a movie about adultery rather than, say, a large shark. ]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/22883/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The Hillary Effect by Taylor Marsh</title><link>http://calitreview.com/22637</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/22637#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:24:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jem Bloomfield</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=22637</guid> <description><![CDATA[There may not be space in a blog post to let the reader weigh the words and come to their own conclusion, guided by your discreet commentary, but this habit of GLOSSING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS grates across two hundred and fifty pages.  There’s little rhetorical virtue in having the last word in your own paragraph.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/22637/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith</title><link>http://calitreview.com/22440</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/22440#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:18:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Art]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Van Gogh]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=22440</guid> <description><![CDATA[For an artist who vied with Rembrandt in painting self-portraits, van Gogh seldom allowed himself to be photographed. The one surviving photo, from his days at Goupil’s, shows a scowling, tousled haired young man with troubled, searching eyes. It is the face of a man destined to be a prophet or a lunatic.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/22440/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Critics&#8217; Picks: Best Books of 2011</title><link>http://calitreview.com/22013</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/22013#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:35:55 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Paul Comstock</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Best Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=22013</guid> <description><![CDATA[Our book reviewers select the best books of 2011.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/22013/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Verdi and/or Wagner: Two Men, Two Worlds, Two Centuries by Peter Conrad</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21921</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21921#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:00:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Germany]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Italy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Music]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category> <category><![CDATA[classical music]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Giuseppe Verdi]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Richard Wagner]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21921</guid> <description><![CDATA[Perhaps, the best way of approaching Conrad’s book is to regard it primarily as a meditation on creativity. As with opera itself, where passion and empathy lead, intellectual appreciation will follow. The key insight of this fine book is easy enough to grasp. In an age of strutting nationalism, both Verdi and Wagner gave the world music that ultimately transcends the limits of borders or political ideology, regardless of how subsequent regimes used it.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21921/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>3</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon by Martin Kemp</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21686</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21686#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:00:41 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Design]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category> <category><![CDATA[media]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21686</guid> <description><![CDATA[The Vietnam War had been shredding bodies and hopes for so long that it hardly seemed possible that a single image of human conflict could pierce through the war’s futility and touch our hearts. And then photographer Nick Ut captured “The Girl in the Picture” on film. He aimed his Leica M-2 camera and with one quick “click,” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, became a symbol of the horror of the Vietnam War and by extension all wars.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21686/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Literary Brooklyn by Evan Hughes</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21392</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21392#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:00:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Julia Braun Kessler</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Brooklyn]]></category> <category><![CDATA[New York City]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21392</guid> <description><![CDATA[In his new history of the borough’s development you can virtually trace the emergence of America most talented writers, among them figures like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Thomas Wolfe, Bernard Malamud, Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller.  They, among many other notables, were residents in that “outlandish place,” and, it would seem, most often by choice!]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21392/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21230</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21230#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:00:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Elinor Teele</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Great Britain]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Charles Dickens]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21230</guid> <description><![CDATA[The happiness was not to last. More Scrooge than Bob Cratchit in some respects, he was not particularly fond of his sons. Charley, his eldest, he deemed to be suffering from a “lassitude of character” and he did not see much hope for the others. He worried they might metamorphose into his father or his brothers, relying on him for handouts. And he was becoming thoroughly sick of Catherine.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21230/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21288</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21288#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:07:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ancient history]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Mediterranean Sea]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21288</guid> <description><![CDATA[David Abulafia’s new book about the Mediterranean Sea, <em>The Great Sea</em>, has everything a major work of history requires. An important theme, solid research, magnificent writing and a perceptive insight into human nature figure prominently in the pages of his study of the body of water that the Romans called <em>mare nostrum</em>, "our sea."]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21288/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Blue Nights by Joan Didion</title><link>http://calitreview.com/19795</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/19795#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:00:55 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Elinor Teele</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blue Nights]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Joan Didion]]></category> <category><![CDATA[memoir]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=19795</guid> <description><![CDATA[We learn that Quintana Roo was adopted, a beautiful precocious girl with hair “bleached by the beach sun” and an unearthly adult sensibility. At the age of 5, she called the state psychiatric facility to “find out what she needed to do if she was going crazy;” soon after, she called Twentieth-Century Fox to “find out what she needed to do to be a star.”]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/19795/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck</title><link>http://calitreview.com/21136</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/21136#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:00:48 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Chris Malcomb</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[memoir]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=21136</guid> <description><![CDATA[In September 2007, Lou Ureneck, a 56-year-old journalism professor at Boston University, was hospitalized for atrial fibrillation, the exclamation point following a decade-long tailspin that included divorce, his mother’s death, financial failure, deepening depression, and a withering sense of purpose or connection. The week-long stay at Massachusetts General underscored what he’d already begun to realize: he needed to change.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/21136/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark by Brian Kellow</title><link>http://calitreview.com/20948</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/20948#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:00:10 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Elinor Teele</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Pauline Kael]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=20948</guid> <description><![CDATA[So if she wasn’t pleasant, what was Pauline Kael? She was earthy; she was tough; she was not afraid of sex, drugs or Woody Allen. Cigarettes and bourbon were her loyal companions. The East Coast establishment and prissy editors her enemies. As Jerry Lewis said, she was a “dirty old broad.” But he also called her “the most qualified critic in the world. “ Both, I think, she would have perceived as compliments.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/20948/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker</title><link>http://calitreview.com/20760</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/20760#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:00:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category> <category><![CDATA[violence]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=20760</guid> <description><![CDATA[In this profound and spirited work, Pinker champions the civilizing process that, according to his detailed research, has enhanced the cause of peace, decreased the scale of violence and enabled peoples of widely separated nations and ethnic groups to realize their common humanity. Using a mass of scientific data and an intensive reading of history and current events, Pinker makes the case that Planet Earth is becoming a more Peaceable Kingdom.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/20760/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Virginia Woolf  by Alexandra Harris</title><link>http://calitreview.com/20370</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/20370#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:00:52 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Great Britain]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Virginia Woolf]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=20370</guid> <description><![CDATA[Woolf spent much of her life trying to free herself from the grasp of the past, specifically the Victorian milieu of her childhood. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the editor of the prestigious <em>Dictionary of National Biography</em> and a personification of the Victorian <em>pater familias</em>. Woolf both loved and rebelled against him. She suffered a severe nervous breakdown following his death in 1904. Yet it was not until her father died, that she was able to liberate her emotions to the point where she could begin a serious career as a writer.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/20370/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer</title><link>http://calitreview.com/20026</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/20026#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:18:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Elinor Teele</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Art]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Children's Literature]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Edward Gorey]]></category> <category><![CDATA[memoir]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=20026</guid> <description><![CDATA[Neumeyer responded with scholarly esprit, but he was hard put to equal his partner’s digressions. The works of Jorge Luis Borges, the wonders of Japanese court poetry, the inadequacy of <em>The Yellow Submarine</em> – having found a sympathetic spirit, Gorey let loose a torrent of opinions about anything in his path.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/20026/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles</title><link>http://calitreview.com/19419</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/19419#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:01:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Italy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ancient Carthage]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ancient Greece]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ancient history]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ancient Rome]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hannibal]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=19419</guid> <description><![CDATA[Carthage, however, was not merely conquered by Rome. As the title of Miles' book asserts, Carthage was destroyed. In three brutal wars, Carthage's military power was annihilated by the legions of the Roman Republic. The city was ransacked and burned, down to its foundations. The people of Carthage were massacred or enslaved. The literature of the city was put to the torch. Not a stone was left upon a stone.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/19419/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: René Blum and the Ballets Russes by Judith Chazin-Bennahum</title><link>http://calitreview.com/18323</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/18323#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[France]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Germany]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ballet]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ballet Russes]]></category> <category><![CDATA[George Balanchine]]></category> <category><![CDATA[René Blum]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twentieth century]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=18323</guid> <description><![CDATA[All of Blum’s many accomplishments were bracketed between the anti-Semitic turmoil of the Dreyfus Affair that tormented France from 1894 to 1904 and the Nazi-led Holocaust in which he perished. To his dying day, Blum thought of himself as a French patriot. Yet it was the complicity of French officials during the German occupation that set him on the road to Auschwitz.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/18323/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Beautiful &amp; Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr</title><link>http://calitreview.com/18127</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/18127#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:00:58 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Abigail Licad</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Literary Themes]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Poetry]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=18127</guid> <description><![CDATA[Except for a (thankfully) brief, unscientific use of Google metrics, Orr beautifully shares instances of why one might fall in love with poetry. He recounts his life-changing discovery of the poet Philip Larkin, and his experience of helping his father, a stroke victim, improve his speech through readings of Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat.”]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/18127/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones</title><link>http://calitreview.com/18114</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/18114#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:44:46 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jem Bloomfield</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Great Britain]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category> <category><![CDATA[chavs]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=18114</guid> <description><![CDATA[But wherever it originated, the word conjures up an instant picture of young people in cheap sportswear, swigging alcopops, brandishing knives and selling each other drugs whilst getting their fifteen-year-old girlfriends pregnant.  They are a favourite subject for the right-wing tabloids, and where the term “chav” is found, the words “feral”, “benefits” and “underclass” will often be somewhere in the vicinity, not to mention “lifestyles funded by your taxes!”]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/18114/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Mightier Than The Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America by David S. Reynolds</title><link>http://calitreview.com/17357</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/17357#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:45:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jeff McMillan</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[African American]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Theatre]]></category> <category><![CDATA[American History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Harriett Beecher Stowe]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <category><![CDATA[slavery]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=17357</guid> <description><![CDATA[The escalating one-upmanship led to some truly bizarre innovations, such as casting famous boxers in the lead roles. Reynolds described how Peter Jackson, a famous black boxer, figured into the entertainments: “Uncle Tom, between acts or just before dying, would momentarily trade his slave costume for boxing trunks and spar for three rounds with another actor before resuming his tragic role.”]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/17357/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx</title><link>http://calitreview.com/17180</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/17180#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 31 May 2011 18:44:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Mark Fitzgerald</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Annie Proulx]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bird Cloud]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Wyoming]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=17180</guid> <description><![CDATA[Place, in literature, is often the most complex of characters, boasting variable backdrops with tones and textures of every mood imaginable—windswept cliffs, checkered floors, twisted roads and rivers, cobwebbed attics, portentous slants of light and so on down the centuries.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/17180/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great&#8217;s Empire by Robin Waterfield</title><link>http://calitreview.com/15694</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/15694#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 03 May 2011 19:14:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Egypt]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Greece]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alexander The Great]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ancient history]]></category> <category><![CDATA[fourth century B.C.]]></category> <category><![CDATA[third century B.C.]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=15694</guid> <description><![CDATA[It did not take long before most of the Diadochi were gripped by a lust for power nearly as manic as had possessed Alexander. Ptolemy, however, showed a greater restraint. Though he launched several offensive campaigns, Ptolemy largely contented himself with ruling Egypt. Moreover, his policy decisions were marked by an astute blend of urban and economic development, along with encouraging the arts and sciences. Where Demetrius squandered vast sums on siege towers and Dreadnought-sized warships, Ptolemy built Alexandria into a cultural center whose brilliance eventually surpassed Athens.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/15694/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower by Professor X</title><link>http://calitreview.com/15216</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/15216#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:45:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Jascha Kessler</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Education]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=15216</guid> <description><![CDATA[X’s short 21 chapters of informal prose mix the personal-poignant and social-pathetic. They illuminate the pathology of a multi-billion-dollar purely-American enterprise: the community college network snaking through 50 States. Bloated with the goodwill of the ingrained national optimism, it expresses our mania for pieces of paper guaranteeing employable skills supposedly learned from hundreds of pages of sociopsychological babble, the ink-tracks of text in thick books laying out techniques of “administration” by the numbers.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/15216/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: In the Blink of an Eye by Michael Waltrip</title><link>http://calitreview.com/15100</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/15100#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:31:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Geri Jeter</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sports]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dale Earnhardt]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Michael Waltrip]]></category> <category><![CDATA[NASCAR]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=15100</guid> <description><![CDATA[On the last lap, Earnhardt crashed, dying shortly thereafter. The race winner, Michael Waltrip, was celebrating in Victory Lane when he found out that he had lost one of his best friends even as he achieved one of the biggest successes of his racing career. <em>New York Times</em> bestseller <em>In the Blink of an Eye</em> is the story of Waltrip's journey of personal discovery as he dealt with this loss, as well as an account of how a guy from a small town in Kentucky ended up driving at the elite level in his chosen sport.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/15100/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>9</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847-1928 by Julie P. Gelardi</title><link>http://calitreview.com/14792</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/14792#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:26:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twentieth century]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=14792</guid> <description><![CDATA[Following this betrayal, the Romanov dynasty was swept off the stage of history. Many of the family were arrested by the Bolsheviks and executed, some with a degree of cruelty and incompetence that beggars belief. Marie Feodorovna and Marie Pavlovna were evacuated to safety, but the lives of both women were blighted by the near extermination of the Romanov family.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/14792/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: Justice For Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin</title><link>http://calitreview.com/14251</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/14251#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:47:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Ed Voves</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Philosophy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[law]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=14251</guid> <description><![CDATA[Dworkin believes firmly in “cooperative” interpretation, reinforcing ethical precepts with insights from history, literature and philosophy that have stood the test of time. Among the great philosophers, he summons Plato, Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Frederick Nietzsche to lend their voices to the debate.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/14251/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The New York Times Complete Civil War 1861-1865</title><link>http://calitreview.com/13978</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/13978#comments</comments> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 12:00:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Sam Stowe</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Abraham Lincoln]]></category> <category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=13978</guid> <description><![CDATA[This collection of the <em>Times</em>' news coverage during the war is a must-have for Civil War enthusiasts and other American history buffs. It contains the power to astonish modern readers with its lofty rhetoric, constant editorializing in news stories and decisions on what was important to its audience. Those decisions are, in many cases, not what a modern newspaper would choose.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/13978/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Book Review: The Big Policeman by J. North Conway</title><link>http://calitreview.com/13532</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/13532#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:00:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Sam Stowe</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[History]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[gilded age]]></category> <category><![CDATA[J. North Conway]]></category> <category><![CDATA[New York City]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nineteenth century]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Thomas Byrnes]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=13532</guid> <description><![CDATA[J. North Conway's new account of the law enforcement career of Thomas Byrnes, <em>The Big Policeman</em>, shows us what it took to bring some degree of order and safety to New York City's streets in the Gilded Age. And he's scrupulously fair to Byrnes, whose bare-knuckled approach to his job would never be acceptable to most modern Americans. He was a man of his age and, somewhat ironically, a cop who would introduce many of the basic techniques that almost all current law enforcement agencies still use.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/13532/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Critics&#8217; Picks: Best Books of 2010</title><link>http://calitreview.com/13219</link> <comments>http://calitreview.com/13219#comments</comments> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Dec 2010 01:34:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Paul Comstock</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Best Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Books]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction Reviews]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://calitreview.com/?p=13219</guid> <description><![CDATA[Our annual selection of noteworthy books.]]></description> <wfw:commentRss>http://calitreview.com/13219/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>
