It is easy to pan Anna Malaika Tubbs’s The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, released last month […]
Books & Poetry
METAPHYSICS: PERSONAL HISTORY
Ending Where You Began
A journey without travel: irony and contradictions
…I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood and I am waiting for the green mornings to come again youth’s dumb green fields come […]
AUTHORS
Remembrance of Serial Murders Past
The Babysitter is part memoir, part investigative report about Tony Costa
Sixteen years ago, a nightmare Liza Rodman had been having for months suddenly got real. She finally recognized the face of the man who approached her in the dream — […]
BOOK REVIEW
The Survivors Is Jane Harper at Her Criminal Best
An Aussie mystery with echoes of the Outer Cape
If you are in need of a particularly good escape that requires no travel this pandemic February, look no further than Australian crime writer Jane Harper’s latest whodunit, The Survivors, […]
TALKING POINTS
From New York to Truro to Russia and Back
Journalist turned novelist Karen Dukess interviews authors for Castle Hill
Beginning next week, writer Karen Dukess is hosting a series of virtual talks with authors of new fiction and nonfiction via Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. On […]
BOOK REVIEW
The Story of America Through Hand-Crafted Objects
Glenn Adamson’s new history looks at under-represented talents
Perhaps you are turned off by standard American histories, from expensive textbooks to doorstop-sized biographies of Important Men. You might find descriptions of the conflict between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander […]
BOOK REVIEW
Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar Tell It Like It Is
They write of casual racism with candor and humor
Under no circumstances should you crack the covers of Amber Ruffin’s and Lacey Lamar’s You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey in a place you need to be quiet — […]
POETRY
A Secular Celebration of Love and the Earth
Five poems from a new Brendan Galvin collection
Editor’s note: Truro poet Brendan Galvin’s 19th volume of poems, titled Partway to Geophany, was published by Louisiana State University Press in November 2020. Galvin’s many awards include a Guggenheim […]
BOOK REVIEW
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Reveals Marine Mammals’ Radical Nature
Reclaiming the ocean from the heteropatriarchy
Alexis Pauline Gumbs describes herself as a “queer Black feminist love evangelist and marine mammal apprentice” in Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals, published this past November. The description […]
BOOK REVIEW
How to Hold Animals Is a Book to Curl Up With
It offers tips for handling furry, slimy, and scaly creatures
The cover of Toshimitsu Matsuhashi’s How to Hold Animals features an adorable sugar glider, a bug-eyed mouse-like creature, gently cupped between two human hands. Readers might therefore expect the book […]
BOOK REVIEW
The Many Faces of Adrienne Rich
Hilary Holladay’s portrait of a complicated artist
Hilary Holladay’s The Power of Adrienne Rich is an accessible biography of the celebrated American poet. Published last month, it is the first comprehensive exploration of both the person and […]
WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?
This Is Not an Interview With André Gregory
In This Is Not My Memoir, a provocateur looks back with wit
Preparing for my phone call with actor, playwright, and director André Gregory, I felt a bit like the socially anxious Wallace Shawn at the beginning of My Dinner With André. […]
BOOK REVIEW
Bach to the Drawing Board
In The Way of Bach, Dan Moller makes the missteps of an academic amateur
The concept behind Dan Moller’s recently published The Way of Bach: Three Years With the Man, the Music, and the Piano, is a good one. It tells of the author’s […]
BOOK REVIEW
In the Ravages of Ebola, Paul Farmer Finds Pandemic Roots
A tireless doctor gives infectious disease a global perspective
Dr. Paul Farmer and three friends toured an Ebola treatment unit (E.T.U.) in Monrovia, Liberia, in October 2014. They watched as two brothers vomited and soiled themselves with diarrhea as […]
BOOKSTORES
A Provincetown Rarity up Your Alley
Tim’s Used Books rides out the pandemic
At 242 Commercial St. in Provincetown, hidden at the end of a long alley that runs between a furniture store and a psychic’s office, there is a kind of enchanted […]
