Month: August 2022

A memoir about growing up in a survivalist Mormon family, where isolation and a father’s harsh fundamentalism conspire to destroy a budding spirit of curiosity. Despite the challenges, the determined Westover transcends her lot in life, steps into a classroom for the first time at …

Polish historian Grynberg gives us an up-close view of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The 29 letters and diary entries from various ghetto inhabitants combine to present a disturbingly clear view of what it was like to be at the mercy …

A biographical account of an infantryman’s Vietnam experiences—from getting drafted to mustering out after a year of spilling “certain blood for uncertain reasons.” A book about morality and courage and patriotism and everything in between. Plato and Socrates have thought-provoking cameos. The mixture of objective …

Charlie Kaufman’s latest movie equates redundant mood metaphors with illumination. The mind-bending story is intentionally opaque, symbolically overwrought and vexingly long. Don’t look for plot. The only thing constant: a sense of doubt and melancholy. The acting is great, and there is much sadness and …

In Irving’s twelfth novel, he sets his storytelling sights on loggers at a remote camp in 1950s New Hampshire. There’s a 12-year-old boy and his stoic father and a moment of grotesque violence that turns the pair into fugitives. Like many of Irving’s other novels, …

A fascinating graphic novel by a high-school friend of Jeffrey Dahmer. Backderf paints a disturbing picture not only of a future serial killer, but of life in suburban Ohio in the late 1970s. A constant refrain throughout this responsibly told story: While Dahmer is clearly …

There’s a fast-mutating organism seeping out of an underground storage facility, and it wants to wipe out humanity. It falls to a quick-thinking bioterror specialist to put the thing back in its box. This bustling thriller by one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters has a …

So what would happen to our planet if all the people vanished? How long before the constructions of Homo sapiens turn to microbial dust? The answers are riveting (e.g. Manhattan’s Amsterdam Avenue would become a river in no time). This book makes complex science accessible …

A biography of “Stalin’s last American Spy.” Noel Field comes of age in the aftermath of World War I and embraces the shiny new ideals of Communism. Through decades of postings at the State Department and overseas, and through his own imprisonment behind the Iron …

From the everyone-has-read-this-one file, this classic has as many detractors as it does admirers. Is Holden Caulfield a sensitive soul or a boring whiner? Is his quest through New York at Christmastime an illuminating post-modern odyssey or much ado about solipsism? I can settle this: …