“Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” should be required reading for a general public that deserves more than easy evasions or tired indictments, for students who deserve an honest and unflinching engagement with the historical past, and for citizens seeking solutions for the problems of a troubled legacy.
Engaging seriously with the evidence on issues of crime reduction, allegations of police brutality, and unjustified lethal use of force on members of minority communities was clearly not part of Mac Donald’s purpose in writing this book. She chose instead to present a lawyer’s brief in defense of the police against charges of discriminatory treatment and over-policing of minor crime.
Winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize in history, Heather Ann Thompson’s account of the 1971 Attica Prison revolt and its aftermath makes for a readable, interesting, and at times gripping book. Almost every page contains some revelation that the State of New York tried mightily to suppress.
How the Hell Did This Happen? is a quick and diverting read that offers a bit to think about whether, and how much, our most recent presidential election reveals the country going completely off the rails.
Sam Quinones’s Dreamland is a complex, fascinating and ultimately haunting book about a society betrayed by its fundamental trust in science and capitalism.
Slaughterhouse demonstrates how the stockyards district is once more at the forefront of innovation in food production and the use of urban space, again making Chicago a showplace for the future.
For readers interested in concert pianists, Van Cliburn and his story enrich our understanding of how classical musicians developed their careers against the backdrop of the Cold War. For those drawn to this book more out of interest in political history, Nigel Cliff shows that musicians’ stories can give us perspective on the private and public faces of this conflict.
Cop Under Fire is a rambling monologue, aggressively expressed if not always cogently persuasive as a set of arguments. It would serve Clarke adequately as a campaign book as it expounds his policy views in a number of areas, some only tangentially related, at best, to law enforcement.
While Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane is one of the most beloved and frequently taught and dissected works in American film history, Lebo is careful to remind readers that the film’s success was anything but a foregone conclusion.
Although Ellis Cashmore at times overstates Taylor’s influence his book Elizabeth Taylor is, at its best, as much about the public lives of the many people surrounding Taylor as it is about Taylor herself.