Archive for The Book Bum

Second Look Books:  “The Paperboy” by Pete Dexter

Second Look Books: “The Paperboy” by Pete Dexter

Second Look Books: The Paperboy by Pete Dexter (Random House, $23) Pete Dexter is the justly praised author of “Paris Trout”, a novel that won for its author the coveted National Book Award, and that was made into a TV movie starring the creepy Dennis…

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Perspectives:  On Creativity and the Human Brain: “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art From Vienna 1900 to the Present” by Eric Kandel

Perspectives: On Creativity and the Human Brain: “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art From Vienna 1900 to the Present” by Eric Kandel

Perspectives: A Perspective on Creativity and the Human Brain: “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art From Vienna 1900 to the Present” by Eric Kandel Eric Kandel is a cognitive psychologist, neurobiologist and Novel Laureate with a special interest in…

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Second Look Books:  “The Gutenberg Elegies” by Sven Birkerts

Second Look Books: “The Gutenberg Elegies” by Sven Birkerts

Second Look Books: The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts (Faber and Faber, $22.95). This book review was first published in February 1995. It includes a discussion of “Out of Control” by Kevin Kelly. Sven Birkerts is one…

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Second Look Books:  “Independence Day” by Richard Ford

Second Look Books: “Independence Day” by Richard Ford

Second Look Books: Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf, $24) This book review was first published on Sunday, July 30, 1995. Richard Ford is no longer a “young American writer.” He is, alas, in late maturity, that time in his professional life wherein…

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Second Look Books: “Sparring with Hemingway” by Budd Schulberg

Second Look Books: “Sparring with Hemingway” by Budd Schulberg

Second Look Books: Sparring With Hemingway by Bud Schulberg (Ivan R. Dee, $25). This book review was first published in October, 1995. “There are those who see boxing as a blood spectacle, deeply and fundamentally wrong, a sport that encourages one man to beat and…

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Second Look Books:  “A Way in the World by V. S. Naipaul

Second Look Books: “A Way in the World by V. S. Naipaul

Second Look Books: A Way in the World by V. S. Naipaul (Alfred A. Knopf $23) First published August 14, 1994. In this review from twenty years ago, I see that not much has changed. Colonized by the West, the Middle East is now in…

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Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture by William Leach

Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture by William Leach

Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture by William Leach (Pantheon Books, New York, 1993) The original American culture was an idealized blend of Republican virtue, Christian piety and community values overlaid against a backdrop of slavery, gambling, genocide…

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Second Look Books:  Killing Custer by James Welch with Paul Stekler

Second Look Books: Killing Custer by James Welch with Paul Stekler

Second Look Books: Killing Custer by James Welch with Paul Stekler (Alfred A. Knopf, $25) James Welch is the author of two splendidly bleak novels of American Indian experience. “The Death of Jim Loney” and “Winter in the Blood” together constitute a considerably eloquent body…

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Second Look Books:  The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux

Second Look Books: The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux

Theroux, Paul. The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2011 (285pp. $25) Before too much of the 19th century had exhausted itself in revolution and bloody war, travel, which had once been the province of solitary wayfarers,…

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Second Look Books: The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis

Second Look Books: The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis

Second Look Books: The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis (Alfred A. Knopf, $22)  Brett Easton Ellis is justly famous for his book, “American Psycho” which caused a moral firestorm when it was first published. I consider Ellis a fine American novelist who is responding to…

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