The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965–2005 By Zachary Leader Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Hardcover, 784 pages, $40. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson I was hard on the first volume, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964, in the June 2015 issue of The New...
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts. Viking, 2018. Hardcover, 1152 pages, $40. Reviewed by Joseph Bottum and Benjamin F. Jones There are now more than a thousand biographies of Winston Churchill. Or so declares the publicity material accompanying Andrew...
Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery. Little, Brown and Company, 2018. Hardcover, 512 pages, $35. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet Many years ago I saw an obituary notice in the local gay newspaper. Above a desolate,...
The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, edited by Christine Flanagan. The University of Georgia Press, 2018. Hardcover, 254 pages, $32.95 Reviewed by Emina Melonic “This girl is a real novelist,” said Caroline Gordon in a letter to Robert...
A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley. by Jane Kamensky. W.W. Norton and Company, 2017. Hardcover, 544 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by James Baresel Much as honesty forces the admission that they are not of equal aesthetic quality, the works of John...
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!