Blogroll

Book Review: Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill

As I’ve previously lamented, America seems to take an almost chauvinistic approach to literature, displaying little or no interest in works originally written in another language and then translated into English. The potential disconnect with Malvinas Requiem will probably start with the title. Regardless, those who have called it Argentina’s Catch-22 just may be justified […]

Book Review: Living Blue in the Red States edited by David Starkey

By virtue of the title alone, Living Blue in the Red States — a collection of 21 “creative nonfiction” essays — seems right up my alley. Here I am about the darkest blue liberal you can get but a a lifelong resident of one of the deepest red states, one which, since supporting FDR in […]

Book Review: The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout

So often it’s cast as “us against them,” a battle of cultures, West versus East, or even a “crusade,” with all its loaded implications. For several reasons, Tahar Djaout’s novel The Last Summer of Reason demonstrates the error of using such thinking when it comes to radical Islamists. In fact, it shows that the impact […]

Book Review: Skylark Farm and The Exception

My recent interest in foreign fiction — works originally written in a language other than English — continues to pay dividends. In the last two weeks, it produced two wonderful works, Antonia Arslan’s Skylark Farm and Christian Jungersen’s The Exception. I’ll leave it to those smarter than me to determine if there’s any significance to […]

Book Review: The Trap by Daniel Brook

It’s one of the sound bites that seems to have continuing resonance: Democrats, particularly liberals, love to “tax and spend.” Yet as reflected in Daniel Brook’s The Trap, the kernel of truth that lies in the epithet is that what liberals really advocate is fair taxation with spending tailored to needs that benefit the nation […]