Signs of Life by Peter Sekaer My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had not heard of Sekaer until I saw this book. He was a student of Berenice Abbott and a pal — and sometime photographing companion — of Walker Evans. If you like those two you’ll most likely find his work quite interesting. View all my reviews
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Review: Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pretty scary stuff about the global financial crisis, and great insights and anecdotes. I’m not sure I’m as convinced as Lewis that each country’s unique flavor of crisis can be attributed to each country’s unique national character, but it’s an interesting perspective. View all my reviews
Continue readingReview: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien My rating: 5 of 5 stars Forty+ years since I last read it and I still skip many verses of the songs and chants. But otherwise still great. View all my reviews
Continue readingReview: The Passage of Power
The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro My rating: 5 of 5 stars Caro continues to overwrite, but his obsessive love of detail not surprisingly makes for a fine-grained story, a mark of great history writing and sufficient payoff for those who have the patience to slog through it all. In this volume he also seems to moderate the distaste for his subject that has been evident throughout the biography. This covers the period, after all, where Johnson built a foundation of greatness as he rose above his predecessor’s accomplishments by passing the first strong civil rights law since
Continue readingReview: Lost Chicago
Lost Chicago by John Paulett My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pictures of old buildings. Interesting historical tidbits. What’s not to like? View all my reviews
Continue readingReview: The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers
The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers by James O’Shea My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you lived within the orbit of Tribune Co. or the L.A. Times within the last decade, this book will be interesting to you. It’s a quick read with a number of fine anecdotes. That means it’s mostly inside baseball, so if you’re looking for great insights into the fate of journalism in the (sadly likely) post-newspaper age, you’ll want to look elsewhere. O’Shea throws in a handful of mea culpas but little reflection on how the narrow
Continue readingReview: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker My rating: 4 of 5 stars Steven Pinker’s core argument is compelling and important. Contrary to the nearly universal assumption that things have never been worse, human society is actually becoming less violent. As horrifically as the wars and genocides of the last 100 years loom in our consciousness, the long view of history demonstrates that life for many of our ancestors was far nastier. Genocide, rape and enslavement were routine, even heroic, aspects of war. Interpersonal violence was ubiquitous. Human rights as a concept was unknown.
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Book Review: Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught And Outsider Artists
Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught And Outsider Artists, Charles Russell, Prestel, 256 pages, 180 color illustrations, 2011. ISBN: 978-3-7913-4490-4. Hardcover $65.00 Charles Russell’s Groundwaters has the look and feel of a conventional coffee table book, and it can indeed be appreciated simply for its many beautiful plates representing the work of important self-taught artists of the 20th Century. Start reading the text, however, and another kind of book emerges. Those pictures aren’t there just because they’re striking. Each one is referenced in the text to make or elucidate a point, and Russell has many to make. Their density
Continue readingBook Review: Accidental Genius, Art from the Anthony Petullo Collection
Accidental Genius, Art from the Anthony Petullo Collection, by Lisa Stone and Jane Kallir, Milwaukee Art Museum/DelMonico Books/Prestel, 240 pages, 250 color illustrations, 2012. ISBN 978-3-7913-5200-8. Hard cover $60
Continue readingReview: A Murky Business
A Murky Business by Honoré de Balzac My rating: 4 of 5 stars Did Balzac write anything crummy? I’m not expert enough to know. This is another good one, though you really need a working knowledge of revolutionary and Napoleonic France to follow the plot. View all my reviews
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