Amanda Gorman’s ‘Call Us What We Carry: Poems’ Review
To recite at the inauguration of a U.S. president is to occupy what must be the biggest poetry platform on earth. When Amanda Gorman...
‘The Fortune Men,’ a Novel That Remembers a Man Wrongly Sentenced to Death
There was a moment in Gary Shteyngart’s novel “Lake Success” (2018), the so-so book he wrote before this year’s excellent one, that’s stuck with...
‘The Anomaly,’ Part Airplane Thriller and Part Exploration of Reality, Fate and Free Will
“Wait … you’re pulling my leg! Do you think you’re in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind?’” the passenger asks, adding: “What kind of...
Mel Brooks Keeps It Very Light in ‘All About Me!’
Mel Brooks has been responsible for so much in the American comedic canon, for so long, it sometimes seems he is, if not 2,000...
‘Looking for the Good War’ Says Our Nostalgia for World War II Has Done Real Harm
Toward the end of “Looking for the Good War,” Elizabeth D. Samet’s discerning new book about the gauzy mythology that has shrouded the historical...