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Book Review: Fog Facts (2005)

Larry Beinhart’s Fog Facts never quite settles on whether it wants to be a Bush-bashing book, a book on the failings of the mainstream media or both. Ultimately, it probably doesn’t matter because there are better efforts out there in each category.

Supposedly, the book’s theme is that there are certain facts or significant news […]

Book Review: Jesus Land (2005)

Over the last decade the slogan “What Would Jesus Do?” has become a motto of many Christians. Sadly, it preceded the time period covered in Jesus Land, a harrowing memoir by Julie Scheeres. But, then again, maybe it would have made no difference.

Jesus Land is a story of racism, religion and dysfunction in a […]

Book Review: Beasts of No Nation (2005)

I’m always cautious when a young writer is proclaimed as the next great thing. That’s the kind of press Uzodinma Iweala has been getting with his debut novel, Beasts of No Nation. While I’m still not ready to join the adulation forces, the book is undoubtedly a worthwhile read.

Beasts of No Nation tells the […]

Book Review: Hunger: An Unnatural History (2005)

Somehow, somewhere America’s version of giving thanks became stuffing ourselves with food and then collapsing into an easy chair to watch football. Sharman Apt Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History provides an excellent counterpoint to that mindset. Before you start backing away, this isn’t book about famine in the third world (although that is unquestionably part […]

Book Review: Galileo’s Children (2005)

One of the things that attracted me to science fiction is its ability to create a different reality and use it as a prism through which to examine ourselves and society. That is part of what motivates Galileo’s Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition, an anthology of previously published short stories

The 13-story collection, issued […]