-
Middlemarch, Eliot (1872)
Middlemarch depicts a very particular people, place, and time: the English provincial middle-class of the 1830s. Eliot cares about detail. The speech of the characters, their behavioral decorum,…
4 min read
-
Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan (2020)
All Bob ever wanted is for us to not forget the past. Not to excuse its crimes or stop moving forward, but to simply remember what we once…
4 min read
-
Watchmen, Moore & Gibbons (1986)
Eliza’s take: Armament as a deterrent to nuclear war is a sketchy proposition, yet 80 years since Hiroshima, that seems the only approach with traction. The world’s arsenals…
4 min read
-
From Eternity to Here, Carroll (2010)
From Eternity to Here is the best available single-book popular treatment of time and entropy as understood by present-day physics. These are not easy topics. The history of…
4 min read
-
Soul Journey, Gillian Welch (2003)
Critics generally regard Gillian Welch’s third album, Soul Journey, as an artistic lull. I disagree. The dominant themes of her other early albums—Revival‘s wistfulness, Hell Among the Yearlings‘…
4 min read
-
The Corrections, Franzen (2001)
There are good reasons why The Corrections is talked about in the same breath as the great 19th-century Russian novels. The book has similar ambitions—to explore psychological truths…
4 min read
