Our Comic Ends
The magic trick that Chast performs in her cartoons is to make laughter out of the dirty secret of life: it is an alternately stressful and humdrum affair, and then it is over.
Reviews
An Old Couple’s Search for Dignity
No one—in either real or reel life—wants to confront the difficulties of aging, the imminence of dying. The point is best proved by Leo McCarey’s glorious Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), the most unbearably moving and resolutely unsparing work Hollywood has ever made about the elderly.
The Inauthenticity of Equality
Harry G. Frankfurt, the Princeton philosopher who previously expounded On Bulls—t argues that we are keeping our eye on the wrong ball in current conversations regarding economic justice.
Living For the City
For readers who are new in town, this volume is a tour through a Washington they will not learn about in any guidebook. For others, reading this collection is like, yes, flying home.
Gateway to the World
St. Louis and Empire shows how the city became a victim of its own success, and why It is vital that the region pursue its agenda abroad, while attending to vital affairs at home.
The Long-Suffering Soul Singer
Dreams to Remember is not without its redeeming features. Redding fans may appreciate Ribowsky’s enthusiasm for his subject, and the book is less inflammatory than a 2001 Redding biography so sensational it sparked a libel suit. Readers looking for new insights about Redding and 1960s soul music, however, should leave it on the shelf.
The Court of Obama
The notion that sports leads politics, represented in feel-good accounts of Jackie Robinson ending racism, have long since failed to pass muster. Yet perhaps the true audacity of hoop in the age of Obama is that off-court political issues are considered by the widest swath of American publics when voiced by those on it.
Winning is the Only Thing
Pitch by Pitch is exactly what its title states: Gibson describes the first game of the World Series by recounting every pitch he threw in the game and why he threw it. (He also analyzes every pitch McLain and the opposition threw as well.) It is as detailed an account as a reader can ever get of how strenuous pitching is
Wham! Bam! O, What a Sham!
By interviewing so many of the second Ali-Liston fight’s participants and their direct descendants before their information slips away and is lost to us forever, Rob Sneddon has added remarkably to the history of boxing.
On The Court of Social Change
In Strong Inside, Perry Wallace shows that heroic barrier-breaking efforts can make change. The book is a robust tale of a man who rises above negative circumstances and refuses to let people make him hate.