About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Alan Jacobs
Mixed The Washington Post Much of what he says here about \'the value of paying attention to old books\' will sound supremely reasonable to those who believe it is good to read them, and to read as many of them as possible. Some of what he says, and in certain cases what he neglects to say, will remind readers why they should broaden their tastes beyond the Western canon ... This author often takes some palpable pains to deliver his own thoughts inoffensively (although he doesn’t always avoid what woke readers will see as cringeworthy phrasing). His rhetorical strategy is not to debate the content of old books but to appeal to people’s self-interest ... If reading helps us understand ourselves better by understanding others, then maybe Jacobs has missed an opportunity to show the degree to which he has benefited from his own reading beyond the Western ethnocentric norm.
Olivia Laing
Positive The Washington Post Most of the pieces in this volume fit more cleanly into one category or another, and in general the separation is well received. A dozen or so serve as wonderful little biographies of creative figures — writers and visual artists mainly, as well as filmmakers, performers and others ... Laing’s arts writing is sharp-minded, and her manner is generous toward both subject and reader ... These more personal, more poetical pieces may certainly persuade readers that the creative work she highlights, the product of open and tolerant minds, is on the side of right. Of course, getting through to people on the other side is a challenge that neither artwork nor rational argument can always meet. Still, Laing has faith in the role that art can play.
Paul Hendrickson
Rave The Washington Post Hendrickson employs tremendously rigorous research to interrogate the myths that hang around his larger-than-life subject. His is not an effort to exonerate (or make excuses for the bad behavior of yet another white male artist!) but to dig deeply into who Frank Lloyd Wright really was ... This thick volume is not meant to serve as an introduction to Wright or his artistic trajectory...That is not to say that it doesn’t cover Wright’s notable projects or his notions about \'organic architecture\' with a great deal of attention and care. If anything, the author overdoes it, parsing too many chronologies and splitting too many hairs with previous Wright biographers ... But Hendrickson’s persistent and expansive curiosity also takes readers beyond Wright in important, revelatory ways ... Passing through [Wright\'s] darknesses makes you see his buildings, and all that flow, beauty and light, in a new way.
Paul Hendrickson
Positive The Chicago Tribune Aren’t we contending with enough high-profile narcissism these days? But readers of this biography will begin to see these things as only part of a complex self. As he did in his last book, Hendrickson employs tremendously rigorous research to interrogate the myths that hang around his larger-than-life subject. His is not an effort to exonerate but to dig deeply into who Wright really was ... This thick volume is not meant to serve as an introduction to Wright or his artistic trajectory. That is not to say that it doesn’t cover Wright’s notable projects or his notions about \'organic architecture\' with a great deal of attention and care. If anything, the author overdoes it, parsing too many chronologies and splitting too many hairs with previous biographers ... But Hendrickson’s persistent and expansive curiosity also takes readers beyond Wright in important, revelatory ways. A lot of effort here goes into learning about Wright’s family members, clients and even Carlton. And so Wright’s narrative becomes part of a larger story that also involves the Great Migration, the horror of the Tulsa Race Riot, the legacy of the Transcendentalists, the tradition of the New England pulpit and the beginning of suburban sprawl. What this suggests: No American life isn’t bound up with our larger cultural history.
Casey Cep
Positive The Washington Post ... succeeds in telling the story that Nelle Harper Lee could not and offers an affecting account of Lee’s attempt to give meaning to a startling series of events ... To the potential disappointment of some readers, Furious Hours is not structured as a typical murder mystery or courtroom drama. But it’s a rich, ambitious, beautifully written book. A gifted journalist who has written frequently for the New Yorker, Cep has imposed order here by providing biographical portraits of three figures: Maxwell, Radney and Lee. Each section moves the intrigue forward while rendering the lives of these real people, and the forces at work within them, as fully and fairly as possible ... a revealing triptych, one that tells a crime story but also says a great deal about the racial, cultural and political history of the South ... the section on Lee is by itself worth the price of admission.
Joshua Rivkin
Positive Los Angeles Review of Books \"[Chalk] is a laudable effort to lift the veil on an artist of concealment. It is also the story of trying to write about a human subject who was not just an extremely private person, but whose legacy (and personal life) is still actively protected, even controlled ... [Rivkin] certainly devotes himself to the hard job of biography, bringing every tool to bear on understanding ... the writing doesn’t always seem terribly well matched to a painter whose aesthetic was more about intimation and, frequently, erasure. Yet Chalk is an illuminating book, especially good on instances of artistic development and image-making ... Rivkin has thoroughly mined the public archives and lets his readers in on what amounts to an ongoing conversation by critics, art historians, and others who have admired or contended with Twombly ... In some ways, Chalk takes readers on a failed journey, but it returns them to the paintings, the drawings, and the sculpture, and to all those poets, too.\
Stuart Kells
Positive The New York Times Book Review As the subtitle of Kell[s]’s survey suggests, the structure imitates that of a catalog or collection, one that includes many pamphlet-length treats ... The Library lends itself to browsing, but a sequential reading reveals a larger theme ... We are reminded of the frequency with which certain kinds of texts have been prohibited, if not destroyed, on religious, political or moral grounds; libraries have often not just protected their holdings, but kept them from everyday readers ... The Library abounds in fascinating tales of lost codices and found manuscripts, and the sometimes unscrupulous schemes by which people have conspired to obtain or amass valuable volumes. All this attention to private collections and ownership only underscores the importance of availability and access, and hints at the challenges faced by libraries now functioning in both physical and digital modes.