'Book Reviews' Category
Satan’s Circus by Mike Dash
Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century
by Mike DashIn February, 1894, Charley Becker put on the uniform of a New York City police officer. Twenty one years later, the state of New York executed him for murder. In 1894 the NYC police department was completely corrupt. The department was [...]
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
Take the Cannoli
by Sarah VowellYou would think that reading and reviewing a book written ten years ago about American culture might be tricky. You would expect that so much has changed that a book like this would be more like a history lesson than a view into America. But surprisingly, in spite of [...]
Rizzo’s War by Lou Manfredo
Rizzo’s War
by Lou ManfredoI think it would be very difficult to create two characters who are more stereotyped than the two main characters in this story. We have Joe Rizzo, tough Italian detective who has been on the force forever and is just waiting to be able to afford to live off his pension [...]
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
The Crying Tree
by Naseem RakhaNate Stanley is offered a job as a deputy sheriff in Oregon and accepts it against his wife, Irene’s, opinion. He drags his family 2,000 miles to their new home and then soon after their arrival, the Stanley’s son, Shep, is murdered. The next part of the book is [...]
No Sense of Decency by Robert Shogan
No Sense of Decency
by Robert ShoganIn the Spring of 1954, Senator Joe McCarthy was one of the most feared men in Washington. In the Summer of 1954, McCarthy had lost his power and no one was afraid of him. What happened in between was the Army-McCarthy hearings and why the hearings changed everything was because [...]
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
by Kirsten Menger-AndersonThis book is a collection of short stories with the vague link of occurring in separate generations of one family. The author tries to show a history of quack medicine through the eyes of one family but really the link to the single family is vague at best [...]
An Arsonist’s Guide To Writer’s Homes in New England
An Arsonist’s Guide To Writer’s Homes in New England
by Brock ClarkeThe cover of my copy of this book quotes reviews from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly that describe the book as wildly, unpredictably, and searingly funny and as absurdly hilarious. I can only assume the the authors of those reviews either didn’t [...]
Vanished Smile
Vanished SmileThe Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
by R. A. ScottiIt’s 1911. A hot summer’s day in Paris. The guard at the Louvre is asked where the Mona Lisa is by an avid fan of the painting who is working on a copy. The guard replies that he does not know, perhaps it [...]
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah VowellI first learned who Sarah Vowell is, not from her books or from her appearances on NPR, but from a short film about her and one of her books that was on the DVD of “The Incredibles.” That film interested me enough to read her books and I have [...]
Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
by Stefan AustI grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested in [...]
