Category: Micro-Reviews

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the human race but were afraid to ask. Oxford-educated historian Harari takes us on a journey from the birth of the species through the beginning of language, the agricultural revolution, the advent of cities and industry …

This “memory play” follows the last years in the life of Gladys, a Greenwich Village art gallery owner who is dying slowly of Alzheimer’s disease. While Gladys falters, her children are left to deal with a growing sense of helplessness. Grandson Daniel guides us through …

This memoir by Frank McCourt’s younger brother is the literary equivalent of sharing a Guinness or ten with a loquacious, life-loving Irishman. Actor, bar owner, smuggler, raconteur—McCourt wears many hats. After escaping the grinding poverty of Limerick as a child, he comes of age in …

Before he wrote Angela’s Ashes, McCourt spent 30 years teaching in public high schools in New York. A typical educator he was not. There were odd-ball singalongs in class, field trips to the movies, and, inevitably, firings because he refused to suffer the foolishness of …

An American missionary crosses into North Korea with “treacherous” religious materials on his hard drive. What follows is a 15-year sentence of hard labor and a life of deprivation and indoctrination. Throughout his ordeal, Bae maintains his faith and does what Jesus would do, trying …

This play about addiction, friendship and love is a hard-edged hoot and an affecting character study. Jackie is a recovering addict who’s going straight after his latest prison stretch. Ralph D. is his sponsor, a sage of Big Book wisdoms who can maybe help keep …

Cue the fireworks for our one-hundredth review. Only the grandest literary achievements deserve to be mentioned in this space. Here are the top 10 books I’ve reviewed in the last few years, in order of brilliance. Feel free to quibble. STORY OF A SECRET STATE …

Known as the world’s greatest (and in some ways last) living explorer, the author of this bracing account of the first unsupported walk across the bottom of the world gives us an enthralling look at an epic errand. Frostbite, starvation and injury are all potentially …

This series of war sketches by the foreign affairs editor of The Observer is both brilliant and oppressively heavy, both harrowing and over-intellectual. Beaumont’s main focus is on the effects of war on civilians There’s no doubting his intelligence or his experience, but at times …

A good book with a very accurate sub-title. Rather than providing the usual compendium of war-is-hell reminiscences, CNN’s chief international correspondent takes us from her days as a somewhat privileged college student to the hottest war zones of the last 30 years. Along the way …