Category: Micro-Reviews

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: …

A book review of a play? Don’t plays have to be seen rather than read? Nope. This one (find it at Amazon) is one of the best. It’s about the everyday lives of the people who sell you your popcorn at the local movie house. …

The acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel by one of the literary world’s brightest young (or youngish) stars. A plague has wiped out most of humanity, and a few survivors are striving to keep the “human” in “humankind” by preserving the old culture. The time-bending narrative is complex …

Stupendous. Magnificent. The breadth of Tolstoy, the humanity of Shakespeare. This reviewer is awestruck by the sheer … greatness of this treasure. Only an addled misanthrope would not be moved to tears by the compelling narrative, the perfect writing and the sheer TRUTH about the …

An autobiography about the TV personality’s childhood growing up in South Africa. Funny, sad and uplifting. Noah’s relationship with his mother is deeply moving, and the pair’s resilience in the face of unimaginable injustice is inspiring. And the story about the Xhosa hip-hop dance king …

A fictionalized rendering of the last hours of the 9/11 terrorists and the people who crossed their paths. Few books have a more generous heart, and few writers are talented enough to make you feel good about humankind while they’re showing you people self-destructing. This …

More of a screenplay than a novel, this book has sparse punctuation, few speaker attributions, and narration that bleeds into the action. If most writers tried to write like this, the result might not be pretty. Since this is McCarthy we’re talking about—with big questions …