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Recent Posts
- “Camp America”: A New Short Story by William J. Cobb
- Close Encounters of the Chase-Scene Kind: On Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day”
- “White River Crossing”: Ian McGuire’s Terrific New Novel
- New Movie “Fuze” Echoes Classic “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974)
- Who’s the Killer? The Nonlinear Charms of “Strange Darling”
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Tag Archives: Book Reviewing
“White River Crossing”: Ian McGuire’s Terrific New Novel
I usually wince when a book comes out that is compared to any of Cormac McCarthy’s novels: It’s a literary Kiss of Death. He’s just too hard of an act to follow. But with The North Water, and now White River Crossing, Ian McGuire pulls it off. Continue reading
The Novel That Predicted Trump’s ‘Fascism for Dummies’: On Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 Bestseller “It Can’t Happen Here”
Imagine 1984 narrated by Andy Griffith. Continue reading
Review of Paul Andrew Hutton’s “The Apache Wars”: Historical Origins of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” (1986)
Hutton’s The Apache Wars, a nonfiction work, provides great context and understanding to this era, and reinforces the visions of Cormac McCarthy. Continue reading
Review of Jonathan Kennedy’s “Pathogenesis”: Mystery of the Neanderthal Extinction Solved!
A popular theory has been the humans basically pushed Neanderthals out of their territory some 50-40,000 years ago and prevailed because they were smarter. Not so, according to Kennedy. Continue reading
On Pekka Hamalainen’s “Indigenous Continent”: Finnish Historian’s View of Native American History
“Hamalainen’s Indigenous Continent is an impressive book, long and detailed.” Continue reading
On “After the Hunt” and “The Tavern at the End of the World”: Land of the Lost Professors
So the lives of professors are fodder for contemporary fiction and film, as evidenced by these two respective gems: the recent Julia Roberts’ film After the Hunt (2025) and Morris Collins’ just-published novel The Tavern at the End of History. … Continue reading
On Morris Collins’s Novel “The Tavern at the End of History” (2026) and the Coen Brothers’ Film “A Serious Man” (2009)
So years ago a good friend of mine had seen the new Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man before I had and I asked his opinion. He liked it but added, “It’s very Jewish.” Which, now that I know the … Continue reading
On Randall K. Wilson’s “A Place Called Yellowstone”: Award-Winning History of Yellowstone National Park
So as a devoted National-Park aficionado I learned of Randall K. Wilson’s A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park last Spring when it was announced as winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize for the best … Continue reading
On Candice Millard’s “River of Doubt” and “River of the Gods”: Bugs, Snakes, and Disease Aplenty
So a couple years back my wife read Candice Millard’s excellent nonfiction book The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2005). She raved about it and I put it on my reading list, but somehow or other I ended up reading … Continue reading