Shakespeare in Love and Grief
It appears that people now find comfort in the idea that the life of even the greatest of writers is no more satisfying than their own.
Mallory Young
· 9 min read
Review
A collection of 161 posts
Strange Delight
Radley Metzger’s 1975 hardcore adaptation of a celebrated literary hoax is a vast improvement on the cynical source material.
Marilyn Simon
· 15 min read
Murder Most Foul
William J. Mann’s new book about the notorious Black Dahlia case is a valuable corrective to the cottage industry of speculative theories that proliferated after her murder in 1947.
Ron Capshaw
· 10 min read
Heir Jordan
Aaron Magid has written a timely biography of a consequential monarch.
Michael M. Rosen
· 8 min read
God of the Yawning Gaps
It’s hard to believe in God when even very bright, thoughtful people can’t come up with good reasons why you should.
Graham Daseler
· 13 min read
Stormclouds Over the Capitol
Mary Clare Jalonick’s oral history of the 6 January riot is an important corrective to the second Trump administration’s vandalism of the historical record.
Ron Capshaw
· 7 min read
Precipice of Collapse
Two new books about America’s justice system paint a bleak picture of a deeply divided country.
Ron Capshaw
· 8 min read
Cynicism and Cigarettes
Richard Linklater’s film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘À Bout de Souffle’ is a delight.
Charlotte Allen
· 17 min read
All the Nuzzi That’s Fit to Print
Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Valerie Pavilonis
· 10 min read
The Conned Artist
David Mamet’s new polemic is filled with muddled prose and muddled thought.
Graham Daseler
· 11 min read
Too Much Gilbert
The author of ‘Eat Pray Love’ has returned with a new memoir, which features all the usual problems with her writing writ large.
Charlotte Allen
· 22 min read
Red Sheep
An impressive new biography of Jessica Mitford emphasises her sceptical and anti-authoritarian personality. But this was only half of the picture.
Ron Capshaw
· 11 min read
Power and Its Malcontents
Shadi Hamid has an uneasy conscience, and he doesn’t yet know what to do with it.
Brian Stewart
· 25 min read
I Will Find a City
Jonathan Gould’s new Talking Heads biography recalls a once-thriving and now disintegrating independent media network that could elevate eccentrics with potential.
Matt Hanson
· 7 min read
A Self-Created Tyrant
In a new biography of Stalin, William Nester does his best to locate a human being within the monster, but those efforts eventually run aground.
Ron Capshaw
· 6 min read