Tag Archives: Nonfiction

Some journalism doesn’t fit the inherent constraints of newspapers or magazines. Often, that is because the subject is too massive and requires longer periods of investigation than what these formats tend to demand in immediacy. Terry McDermott’s exploration of the 9/11 terrorists, Perfect Soldiers, is an example of this. McDermott, …

Collisions between government and religion were partly responsible for the founding of this country. Some 200 years later, those collisions continue. A legal framework for dealing with constitutional issues raised by some of those collisions is the focus of Marci Hamilton’s book, God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule …

I went to North Korea in 1998 and it was, and no doubt still is, a most fascinating, if spooky, place.

Listen. You gotta keep quiet about this review. Otherwise too many other people will try to cut in on the territory. The thing is, Christopher Null’s Five Stars! How to Become a Film Critic, The World’s Greatest Job, actually does what it says. It tells you how to become a …

... her real ambition was to go to the Congo, and that was where she went next ...

If by the end his writing grew more frenetic and his screeds wilder who's to blame him given the current crop of slime that work in politics. Going from the hope of Bobby Kennedy to the cynicism of George W. Bush would be enough to warp anyone's brain.

Floyd Abrams earned his reputation as one of this country’s leading First Amendment lawyers in the trenches as a trial lawyer. That’s what makes his Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment a welcome addition to the history of First Amendment law. Abrams takes us inside his involvement with seven …

John Kelly’s The Great Mortality is one of those works that proves history can be a wonderful read and not merely a dry recounting of events and dates. The Great Mortality is subtitled “An Intimate History of the Black Death.” Intimate accurately describes how Kelly tells the story. In Kelly’s …

Escaping difficult family circumstances, Joseph Quitman Johnson enlisted in the US army at the age of fourteen and was stationed with the 31st Infantry in the Philippines in April 1941. After Pearl Harbor, his coming-of-age adventure turned into a nightmare of combat and suffering. Johnson survived shelling and hand-to-hand combat, …

It’s a tough job to write a guide to regional beers, but thankfully Mark McKenna’s ten years in the Caribbean gave him the opportunity to sample all 75 local brands. His experience is chronicled in his new book, McKenna’s Guide to Caribbean Beers: All the Islands, All the Brews published …