About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Michelle Obama
Positive Chicago Tribune \"Michelle Obama manages to be inspirational, direct and naive about race and gender politics ... Working twice as hard, only to receive a double portion of disrespect, Obama chooses to focus on the victories: passage of the Affordable Care Act; nearly five years of job growth; the right of same-sex couples to marry; and the soft power she seized as FLOTUS to launch initiatives to fight childhood obesity, encourage students to get to and stay in college, and support job training and employment for veterans and their spouses ... Obama recounts personal triumphs, particularly raising Malia and Sasha to be independent, to give them as normal a childhood as possible, even as cellphones and social media exposed them to never-before-seen scrutiny.\
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
Mixed The Chicago Tribune Much of the story is documented through Murray's correspondence with friends, columns he penned for black newspapers and high society coverage by the black press ... At times, the writing is bogged down by distracting minutia, particularly about who attended which ball. The flood of proper names is hard to follow. And the story isn't told in a strict chronological fashion; chapters proceed in parallel, which can be confusing. But with the recent inauguration of a president unwilling to or incapable of imagining of black people outside of what he's labeled the 'carnage' of crime-ridden, inner cities, Taylor's book could not be more timely.
Wesley Lowery
Positive The Chicago Tribune The most eloquent passages in They Can't Kill Us All come when Lowery reveals the emotional cost paid by those who write the first draft of history, especially when the writers are journalists of color ... As the leader-full (as opposed to leaderless) movement for black lives matures, readers can only hope Lowery will be there to bear witness.
Calvin Trillin
Mixed The Chicago Tribune The subjects in the collection from the longtime New Yorker contributor — tensions between black co-eds and white college administrators, halfhearted attempts at school desegregation, police brutality and questions of racial identity — are as relevant today as they ever were ... While some writers grab readers by the nape, Trillin's hand is at the small of the reader's back. Reading Trillin's take on an all-black Mardi Gras crew prompts the same anxiety you might feel while watching a novice totter across a high wire ... In any compilation of pieces reported over so many years, some will stand up better than others...Reading Trillin's take on an all-black Mardi Gras crew prompts the same anxiety you might feel while watching a novice totter across a high wire.