Insomniac City by Bill Hayes
★★★★★ Bill Hayes left San Francisco desolate after the death of his partner, Steve. He bought a one-way ticket to New York and rented an apartment. He recalls observing five ailanthus trees from his...
Category: Biography & Memoir
The Book Thieves by Anders Rydell
★★★★★ Anders Rydell illustrates the myriad ways in which the Nazis made book disappear: they were stolen, burned, or locked away in their private libraries to be studied in order to turn their truths...
The Fortress by Danielle Trussoni
★★★☆☆ Reading a memoir adds another story layer to what’s happening between the book covers. While you’re engrossed in the story the author is telling, you’re also marveling that the author is so open and frank...
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King
★★★★☆ Ross King’s account of how Claude Monet (1840-1926) came to paint his famous water lilies is surpassed only by a visit, despite the hordes of tourists, to his home and gardens in Giverny,...
True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy by Kati Marton
★★★★☆ Yellow Dog Democrat. Rabid Republican. True Believer. Each term conveys an assumption that one’s beliefs supersede any and all facts. There is no reasoning — no recognition that a viewpoint other than one’s...
Darling Days by iO Tillett Wright
★★★★☆ With a cascade of oddballs, theaters, dancers, confrontations, and concussions, iO Tillett Wright opens her tumultuous childhood to us. NYC in the 90s was a brutal place for the poor, and iO shows...
Melville in Love by Michael Shelden
★★★★★ The clues were always there, hidden in plain sight. Biographer after biographer, essayist after essayist saw the information; some missed it completely. No one who saw the clues put them together until now....
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
★★★★☆ British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh tells “Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery” in this aptly-titled memoir. He provides a personal trip through his career by relating stories tied to various medical problems. Each...
The Art of Fiction by James Salter
★★★★☆ Celebrated in the American fiction canon for his precise, confident prose and stylized mid-century stillness, the late James Salter unquestionably deserves a book like the University of Virginia Press’s The Art of Fiction....
