A learned yet meandering search for the nation’s soul through literature.
A self-described “compulsive reader” assesses America through its books.
Mexican-American cultural critic Stavans ranges widely through fiction, poetry, and essays to offer a thoughtful meditation on the meaning and use of literature in America. How, he asks, has literature reflected and shaped American culture? In the wake of “the havoc” wreaked by the Trump era, he attends particularly to the connection of literature to democracy, asserting that literature “is about the lab where democracy gets tested.” In four chapters, whose “organizing logic,” Stavans admits, is “based on stream of consciousness,” as well as in long, digressive footnotes, he considers myriad topics, including America’s identity as a nation without a past, where the future is open to possibility; the meaning of the “American Dream”; belief in American exceptionalism; traditions of protest; the evolution of American English; and enduring tensions over race, religion, and ideology. Much literature celebrates individualism and defiance, he notes: “The whole country sees itself as made of insurgents, protestors, and mavericks: rebels with a cause.” Just as individuals strive for reinvention—“everyone is on a journey since America itself is a journey”—for the nation as a whole, “the past is being constantly reimagined,” and so is language. Unlike some European countries with academies that monitor usage, American English is in a state of “constant flux,” abetted by the widespread use of technology. While Stavans notes that the nation “thrives in being fervently anti-intellectual,” he himself is a fan of popular genres, such as detective fiction, and he sees “the profusion of genres” as “a sign of health.” Significantly, American literature has erased “the artificial division” between so-called high- and low-brow culture. In a speculative epilogue, Stavans imagines the “sublime” works that could arise after a second civil war. Literature, he writes optimistically, will transform “ashes to gold.”
A learned yet meandering search for the nation’s soul through literature.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-881621-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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