Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: Running, Rome, and Red Brigades
June 7, 2026I knew what was coming but it was always a thrill. Suddenly to our left the...
Non-Fiction Reviews
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
June 6, 2026Mearsheimer and Walt have written an excellent exposition of the Israel Lobby, both in articles and...
Fiction Reviews
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
June 6, 2026The childishness, the pettiness, the jealously, the nitpicking, the backstabbing, the politicking, of all this is...
Fiction Reviews
Noogie’s Time To Shine by Jim Knipfel
June 5, 2026One day, a young boy scares Noogie when he is the middle of restocking a machine...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Alfred S. Posamentier on the Fibonacci Numbers
June 5, 2026"The golden ratio is also quite ubiquitous in art and in architecture. We find it by...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Plucked from Perdition: One Who Lived To Tell Her Tale
June 5, 2026I was told in Prague at midday that I had to be at the Wilson Station...
Fiction Reviews
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
June 5, 2026The Arlington Park of the title is a ‘green, ruminative, inchoate suburb’ with ‘avenues and well-pruned...
Theatre
The House That George Built by Wilfrid Sheed
June 5, 2026And in recreating social history, what a star-studded cast he lines up to perform for us!...
Vietnam
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace by Dang Thuy Tram
June 5, 2026Whether amputating a shrapnel-torn limb or performing an emergency appendectomy, Dr. Tram proved to be remarkably...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: Looking Back at Mussolini
June 4, 2026Mussolini was not the only dictator of his time. In his Europe, in a time of...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Terrors on Terra
June 4, 2026How grotesque it must have sounded to a child, and how frightening. Outdoors, the sun of...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: Cimitero Acattolico
June 4, 2026In 1738 came the first burial by the Pyramid that we know of, that of a...
Religion
Jeffrey J. Kripal, Author of Esalen
June 4, 2026"By human potentialities, Huxley and Esalen meant to refer to all those aspects of the human...
Biography
Is There a Doctor in the House?
June 3, 2026She smoked a lot, but she laughed a lot too. I could easily support her, I...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Douglas Ward
June 3, 2026In an age when ad agencies regularly apply “revolutionary” to new car models and digital toys,...
Sociology
History of Madness by Michel Foucault
June 3, 2026By the 1700s the “correctional” metaphor prevails and most of them are placed in moral and...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Notes From Italy: Dawn in the Suburra
June 3, 2026In early June, the best time in Rome is dawn. A little after first light the...
Fiction Reviews
Who Didn’t Do It?
June 2, 2026The “golden age” of detective fiction, which began roughly with Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles,...
Fiction Reviews
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
June 2, 2026The relationship between Peter and his parents is given more space, but this could also have...
Fiction Reviews
So Many Ways To Begin by Jon McGregor
June 2, 2026David and Eleanor’s story is an unremarkable one. But their ordinary disappointments and frustrations are precisely...
Fiction Reviews
No Man’s Dog: A Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Mystery – by Jon A. Jackson
May 15, 2026In No Man’s Dog Jon Jackson weaves a curious juxtaposition between his long-time hero “Fang” Mulheisen,...

Movies & TV
House Recap: ‘The C-Word’ (Season 8, Episode 19)
May 8, 2026That wasn’t as bad as I feared. Wilson’s alive (for now) and it looks like next...

100 Greatest Gangster Films
100 Greatest Gangster Films: Charley Varrick, #78
May 8, 2026Few filmgoers noticed Charley Varrick when it came out in 1973. After all, The Godfather, that...

Fiction Reviews
Hannah Coulter – by Wendell Berry
May 8, 2026There was a time, not many decades ago, that most of America’s population labored on family...

Music
Album review: Deuce’s Nine Lives
May 8, 2026...and we have achieved triple threat; misogyny, racism and homophobia. Quite an achievement for a guy...

Art
The Dawn of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
May 8, 2026The statue is nicknamed “The Lady of Brussels” because its home museum is in Belgium. It...
Non-Fiction Reviews
What The Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula
May 22, 2026What The Buddha Taught accurately describes itself as a reliable introduction to Buddhism. As a religion...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Gen·e·sis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin by Robert M. Hazen
May 23, 2026In all the recent noise over the higher steps of evolution and the proper way to...
Fiction Reviews
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
May 26, 2026I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Douglas Ward
June 3, 2026In an age when ad agencies regularly apply “revolutionary” to new car models and digital toys,...











