Critical Compendium

Brooklyn Was Mine, edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker

“Brooklyn isn’t Greenwich Village, but many writers — established and ascendant — are concentrated in a handful of low-rise neighborhoods there. In “Brooklyn Was Mine,” a collection of essays edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker, some of the borough’s writers ruminate on arrival and domestic survival in this emerging haute bohemia. The jealous ownership implied by the word “mine” suggests that (à la Walt Whitman) to live in Brooklyn is both to claim possession of a milieu and to be possessed by it. The contributors make the place more sought after and, by a handy symbiosis, the place makes them cool.” Read the review at the New York Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 02.05.08 | Comments: None

Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, by Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel

“A few years ago a psychologist and a philosopher got into an argument over whether we can accurately describe our thoughts. “Yes,” said the psychologist; with training and the help of my special technique, we can accurately describe our thoughts. The philosopher doubted it. To resolve their argument, they recruited a young woman who agreed tell them her thoughts, so that they could argue over whether she was credible. This is not an episode from a Preston Sturgis comedy, but the actual procedure through which Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel produced their remarkable book, “Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic.” The premise is so ludicrous that it might seem impossible for anything to come of it, but this underestimates the skill of the authors, particularly Schwitzgebel, the philosopher, whose talent for straight-faced mischief has been displayed in his some of his other writing.” Read the review at Salon.com.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science | Posted 02.04.08 | Comments: None

Freedom and Neurobiology, by John Searle

“As Searle disarmingly explains in his introduction to Freedom and Neurobiology, he produced this latest volume by accident. In 2001, he gave two lectures at the Sorbonne and agreed to their publication in French translation, thinking that they would in due course appear in some little-read journal. He was pleasantly surprised when some time later he received copies of an elegant little volume called Liberté et neurobiologie. Translations into German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese quickly followed, by which point it seemed silly not to have an English version. Inadvertent though it may be, this book offers a good introduction to Searle’s recent work.” Read the review at the Times Literary Supplement.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science | Posted 02.02.08 | Comments: 1 Comment

Science and Islam, by Muzaffar Iqbal

“Muzaffar Iqbal, who is a well-known scientist and Islamic scholar based in Canada, has written a book about science and Islam that is weighted towards the Middle Ages and has nothing to say about camel breeding or falconry. He has an agreeably caustic and aggressive approach to outdated and erroneous ideas about the history of science. The book is a polemical essay, rather than a history, and welcome as such. One of the targets is the notion that Islamic science was little more than a reheated version of ancient Greek science.” Read the review at the Times Literary Supplement.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Religion, Science | Posted 02.02.08 | Comments: None

The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, by Adam Kirsch

“Kirsch wrote these 27 pieces for magazine publication, and most are good and short (but sometimes, as with his piece on Philip Larkin, the word limit crimps him, making one wonder why he didn’t expand and extend particular essays for the book). He illuminates one postwar living or dead poet after another, from Derek Walcott to Louise Gluck to Czeslaw Milosz, and is particularly fine in presenting Dennis O’Driscoll, Richard Wilbur and Charles Simic.” Read the review at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Criticism, Essays, Nonfiction, Poetry | Posted 01.28.08 | Comments: None

Experiments in Ethics, by Kwame Anthony Appiah

“What philosophers (have not done), until recently, is take an interest in empirical research about our responses to these or other dilemmas. Now, as philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah describes in his concise yet erudite and engagingly written new book, “Experiments in Ethics,” this is changing.” Read the review at the New York Sun.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy | Posted 01.22.08 | Comments: None

Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide, by Peter Allison

“When wandering through the Botswanian wilderness, you could ask for no better ally than Peter Allison. An experienced safari guide with a genuine love for the country and its animals, Allison’s debut, Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide recounts his experiences.” Read the review at Bookslut.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Travel | Posted 01.19.08 | Comments: None

Memory: An Anthology, edited by Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt

“William Maxwell called memory “a form of storytelling … in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw”. John Stuart Mill thought it “the present consciousness of a past sensation”. The science contributors to this anthology locate the various functions of memory in different areas of the brain. Whatever it may be, and wherever it may reside, it is the single human function that has provoked speculation from Plato through St Augustine – both given due attention here – to Jane Austen, Tennyson, Virginia Woolf and the cognitive scientists and psychologists of today. That shower of names may give some flavour of the book’s scope. In fact, it is hard to do justice in a review to the range and depth of a collection which aligns brief sound-bites – Lewis Carroll, Anthony Powell – with entries that run over several pages.” Read the review at the Financial Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science | Posted 01.18.08 | Comments: None

Head and Heart: American Christianities, by Garry Wills

‘In his latest book, “Head and Heart,” Garry Wills surveys the fault lines in U.S. Christianity and argues that the real fracture is between “Enlightened” religion (of the head) and “Evangelical” religion (of the heart). Throughout American history, he writes, Christians have oscillated between these “two poles of religious attraction.” Wills is a liberal Catholic and an outspoken champion of the separation of church and state, so it should not be surprising that his sympathies run with the enlightened camp.’ Read the review at the Washington Post.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Religion | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

Smile When You’re Lying, by Chuck Thompson

‘Easily the question most often asked of us on this job is, “Yeah, but do you read the whole book?” The answer, of course, is yes, we do. And are we ever glad that’s our policy, because if we’d given up on Chuck Thompson’s collection of travel essays, this would have been a much different review.’ Read the review at Time Out Chicago.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Travel | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens

‘The author of “God Is Not Great” seems to have won the battle for World’s Best Atheist (sorry, Richard Dawkins), and here has collected a far-reaching range of likeminded nonbelievers.’ Read the review at Time Out Chicago.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Religion, Science | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

The Intelligence of Flowers, by Maurice Maeterlinck, translated by Philip Mosley

‘As a sequel to his enormously successful 1901 essay, “The Life of the Bee,” which sold an astonishing 250,000 copies, (Maurice) Maeterlinck’s 1907 essay “The Intelligence of Flowers” (nicely translated here from the French by Philip Mosley) melds religious intuition and scientific observation. He describes numerous examples of intelligence in flowers as they seek to reproduce, and by analogy insists that the “genius” observed in the behavior of flowers resembles the wisdom of people.’ Read the review at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Religion, Science | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism, by Umberto Eco, translated by Alastair McEwen

‘Engendering love of his intellect has never been a problem for Umberto Eco. In his nonfiction, the 75-year-old semiotician has resurrected the word as an open symbol. In his postmodern fiction - most notably, “The Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum” - he has played with time, reading the present through texts of the past. And he has ruminated on politics, modern life and media as a columnist for Italian publications such as La Repubblica and L’espresso. It is in these Frank Rich-ified clothes that he appears in “Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism,” a collection of columns from 2000 to 2005, reminding us that in this near-”return to the Crusades,” we are less curious and critical while the seemingly progressive world becomes more rigid and authoritarian. And it is here that Eco often skews least lovable.’ Read the review in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

New Classic Winemakers of California, by Steve Heimoff

‘When I started reading Steve Heimoff’s new book, with the oxymoronic title “New Classic Winemakers of California,” I was prepared for a tough slog through 26 “conversations” of winespeak. Instead I came away amazed by the breadth of opinion among men and women for whom making wine is strictly business.’ Read the review at Bloomberg News.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 12.03.07 | Comments: None

Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place, by Will Self, pictures by Ralph Steadman

‘The . . . pieces in this collection are quick, burnished, furious columns (Will) Self wrote for England’s Independent newspaper. The walk from London to New York is full of festive associations - spontaneous thoughts, images, old songs, and those long-ago days of debauch evoked by his passage - but in these shorter articles, with the friction that can come from word constraint, his riffs catch fire.’ Read the review at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction | Posted 11.30.07 | Comments: None

Best Australian Essays 2007, edited by Drusilla Modjeska

‘For her second go at editing this annual anthology, Drusilla Modjeska has assembled 27 essays that make for varied and absorbing reading. As one would expect, many of the familiar names are here.’ Read the review at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.26.07 | Comments: None

Kidnapped, edited by Tony Grant

‘Days before BBC reporter Alan Johnston was to end a three-year posting in Gaza, gunmen forced him into a white sedan, shoved a hood over his face and sped off. “Now, as I always feared it might, my turn had come,” he writes in “Kidnapped,” a collection of radio essays he produced for the British Broadcasting Corp.’ Read the review at Bloomberg News.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.26.07 | Comments: None

The Next Rodeo: New and Selected Essays by William Kittredge

‘William Kittredge has rightly been called the dean of Western American literature. In this collection of essays written over 30 years, the reader can follow the evolution of Kittredge’s discovery and exploration of the notion that the stories we tell ourselves shape us as individuals, and that a larger sense of story also shapes culture - particularly on a tablet in the West that, from the perspective of the written word, is still as relatively blank as the region’s largely unpopulated landscapes.’ Read the review at the Boston Globe. Buy the book at Amazon.com.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.19.07 | Comments: 1 Comment

Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It, edited by Mike Hoyt and John Palatella

‘For “Reporting Iraq,” the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review interviewed almost 50 reporters - mostly print but also a few broadcasters and local translators - and recorded their first-person perspectives on the conflict that has so bitterly divided the nation. Free from the constraints of objective journalism, the reporters hold nothing back and paint an almost uniformly bleak picture of life in post-Saddam Iraq.’ Read the review at the Houston Chronicle.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.15.07 | Comments: None

Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda

‘It’s a daunting endeavor to critique a critic, even more so an ardent, Pulitzer-winning wordsmith such as Michael Dirda. This challenge is compounded by the nature of his new book, "Classics for Pleasure," an ambitious roundup of classic works of literature chosen for their delight-inducing qualities.’ Read the review at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.15.07 | Comments: None

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories by Katha Pollitt

‘Katha Pollitt is known as a good old-fashioned feminist and leftist columnist for The Nation, as well as a prize-winning poet. Her most recent collection of essays, "Learning to Drive," establishes her as an affecting memoirist as well. A collection of witty reportage on the vicissitudes of a post–World War II child of left-wing parents, the book is also a reminder of a lost New York, a vanished generation, and the gentle persuasive power of memory itself.’ Read the review at the New York Review of Books.

Filed under: Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction | Posted 11.12.07 | Comments: 1 Comment

Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

‘Is Truman Capote a writer of lasting importance? Fewer and fewer people seem to think so, even though Random House has worked hard to secure Capote’s literary immortality: This volume of the writer’s collected essays follows hard upon his complete short stories, his selected letters and his “long-lost” first novel, Summer Crossing.’ Read the review at the Washington Post.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.11.07 | Comments: None

On Ugliness by Umberto Eco

‘Umberto Eco is 75 and has entered the autumnal stage of intellectual renown when publishers sell his books with his name rather than his actual writing. He is not yet the factory of anthologies that Harold Bloom has become. But like On Beauty, Eco’s previous well-packaged venture into aesthetics, much of On Ugliness is a collection of quotes from writers - Aristotle, Dante, Milton, Kafka, Sartre - who are even bigger brands than he is.’ Read the review at the Village Voice.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.09.07 | Comments: 1 Comment

Heirlooms: Letters From a Peach Farmer by David Mas Masumoto

‘Masumoto is an American farmer whose family arrived from Japan in 1898 and today embodies a centurylong history of farming "the other California," the agriculturally rich Central Valley . . . As literary essays, Masumoto’s letters are occasionally uneven. His unwavering adherence to the letter format sometimes adds an "aw, shucks" clumsiness, especially in letters to those who have died, as he finds he must insert disruptive contextual explanations for the anonymous reader.’ Read the review at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Filed under: Essays, Letters, Nonfiction | Posted 11.06.07 | Comments: None

The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947–2005, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, edited by Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and Daniel J. Mahoney

‘In November 2006 a publishing house in Moscow issued the first three volumes of the collected works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The remaining volumes will be released through 2010, and the 30-volume set will be the first full collection of Solzhenitsyn’s works to be published and sold in Russia. "The Solzhenitsyn Reader" is a noteworthy publishing event in its own right. The need for such an anthology in English has been apparent for some time, and not only to acquaint a new generation with his works. The range of his writing is wide, and over the years various shorter pieces - essays, speeches, and the prose poems he calls "miniatures" - have been hard to obtain, even for the resourceful.’ Read the review at the Claremont Review.

Filed under: Essays, Nonfiction, Poetry | Posted 11.03.07 | Comments: None