We help readers find great books.
★★☆☆☆ The promise of Robert Wright’s title is not fulfilled in this personal narrative of his journey toward enlightenment and a deeper understanding of Buddhism. The Appendix of Why Buddhism Is True finally reveals...
★★★★☆ Mark Kurlansky writes that milk is a “10,000-year-old controversy. When you think about it, it was a pretty weird thing to begin with, the idea that we could replace mothers with secretions from...
★★★★☆ Half a lifetime ago my graduate minor was anthropology with a smattering of archaeology. It was so long ago that none of the giants whose works I read and studied are even mentioned...
★★★☆☆ Walter Mondale said that “Reagan’s policies are turning our industrial Midwest into a rust bowl” during a 1984 campaign rally in Cleveland. The press picked up and transformed the statement into the phrase...
★★☆☆☆ The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders disappoints. The title and the cover, a picture of the Dublin University library, suggest a look at some of the great libraries of the world. Instead, we...
★★★★★ Dear Rick, I have before me, waiting to be reviewed, your newest masterpiece (and, I do not use that word lightly), The Best Cook in the World. Subtitled “Tales from My Momma’s Table,”...
★★★★☆ The genesis of Napa at Last Light, the final volume of a trilogy, began with Napa: The Story of an America Eden (1990), “a journalistic foray to California in the early 1980s.” What...
★★★☆☆ As long as there have been interactions between neighboring tribes and villages, there have been stories like Gibraltar. British citizens who lived in Gibraltar in the late 18th Century got along reasonably well...
★★★★☆ Welcome back, old friend. Now in his twenty-first novel, part-time detective Dave Robicheaux is a character readers can count on. A walking conundrum, both saint and sinner, he will get into trouble and...
