PositiveThe Dallas Morning News\"While most of Why Religion? extends an open hand to believers and nonbelievers alike, stressing our vulnerability to fate and our need to make sense of a chaotic world, occasional passages may baffle some readers ... In the end, though, Why Religion? is not so much an argument to be defended as it is the heartfelt confession of a survivor. Most of the time Pagels writes as one of us, never pretending that her vast learning provides armor against suffering ... Readers of all faiths and none can learn from [Pagels\'] brilliance and courage.\
Bill Minutaglio and Steve L. Davis
RaveThe Dallas Morning News\"...a brisk, riveting book that, thanks to the use of present tense, novelistic color and frequent cross-cutting between characters and locations, moves a ton of information with crackling immediacy … The authors do a fine job of stitching together the many disparate Learys: the ‘High Priest of LSD,’ the Harvard psychologist with a genius IQ, the sensualist, the showman, the manipulator … The Most Dangerous Man in America has ‘movie’ written all over it, from Leary\'s initial prison break to Nixon\'s gathering fury as the ‘Pope of Dope’ eludes the manhunt.\
Kate Winkler Dawson
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsA gripping read that illuminates two dark crimes: The political scandal of London's Great Smog of 1952, which killed an estimated 12,000 people; and the frightening deeds of a human killer both demented and mundane … Cutting back and forth in time as Christie plans new murders, Dawson introduces a wider cast of characters who grapple with the suffocating horror of the smog, the killer's machinations or both. Among them are doctors who are largely impotent as the bodies pile up; police officials who fail to connect the deadly dots on Christie; and sleaze-peddling journalists who make him a celebrity sicko during his trial.
Jeremi Suri
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsSuri is long on diagnosis and short on cure, but he does have a few suggestions for rethinking and resizing the presidency, the most novel of which would add an elected "prime minister" to share the presidential burden. Imagine getting that constitutional amendment passed today. Still, Suri makes a strong case for one more national conversation we need to have.
Stephanie Powell Watts
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsIf you read this novel while wearing Gatsby goggles, don't let them obscure a strong story of hope and pain and longing in an extended African-American family ... occasionally, Watts doesn't do enough to differentiate her characters' mental voices, allowing one person's musings to overlap with another's. But Watts excels at showing the dense relationships among characters as they strive for hope and reinvention ... Though its title might hint at despair, No One Is Coming to Save Us is anything but a pessimistic downer. Watts has not produced another Gatsby , but she has written a memorable and moving tale that deserves to be read without constantly squinting for that green light at the end of Daisy's dock.
Pankaj Mishra
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsWhile he in no way justifies violence and terror, Mishra has the courage to pose deeply disturbing questions: What if al-Qaeda and ISIS, for all their savagery, are inevitable products of a world order in which the forces of individualism and self-seeking global capitalism are destroying older, settled ways of being without delivering a better life for millions? ... One of Mishra's many gifts is the ability to find in thinkers of the past important themes that suddenly speak to our moment in time. He finds fertile ground in Dostoevsky ... One strong caveat: After Mishra's brilliant and compelling diagnosis of our modern maladies, after we have been shown through overwhelming detail that 'the present order, democratic or authoritarian, is built upon force and fraud,' leading to a growing 'apocalyptic' mood — he ends without solutions, reforms or so much as a to-do list.
Greg Mitchell
RaveThe Dallas Morning News...[a] thrilling and meticulously documented account ... Mitchell masterfully guides the reader through a labyrinth of details, intertwining the narratives to show how the tunnelers, the NBC crew and the politicians played their parts on the stage of history ... Mitchell has written a fitting tribute to the brave men and women who did all they could to tear down that Wall.
Robert Gottlieb
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsThough Gottlieb does settle some late-inning scores -- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker's famed movie critic, comes off as particularly repellent -- Avid Reader is not a lip-smacking tell-all; the word juicy wouldn't fit many of its anecdotes. Gottlieb may know where all the bodies are buried, but he's not passing out maps. Still, a certain kind of (avid) reader will enjoy this long look back from one of the last giants of a profession that was utterly transformed during his years of dominance.
Randall B. Woods
PositiveThe Dallas Morning News[A] highly readable account of Johnson's Great Society ... Prisoners of Hope should advance the overdue re-evaluation of Johnson, who saw his Great Society dreams sink into the quagmire of Vietnam. He was that rare politician whose burning ambition was matched by a genuine concern for the less fortunate and the courage to act on his principles.
Chris Bachelder
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsThe Throwback Special is like that fateful play — baffling, elusive. It’s also like life. We each have our goals and strategies. We call our plays, and lots of them work. But on any given Sunday, here comes L.T.
Chris Offutt
RaveThe Dallas Morning News[Offutt] may never write a more memorable memoir than this one: Provocative and courageous, the book veers from the painfully revealing to the strangely opaque. As Chris tries to fathom the distant father who lived so much of his life behind locked doors, he raises almost as many questions as he answers.
Randy Roberts & Johnny Smith
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsThe authors also invite a grim and unanswerable question: If Clay had stood by Malcolm, refusing Elijah Muhammad’s demands, would his enemies have dared to have Malcolm killed, knowing Ali would take his side? We will never know.
Karen Olsson
PositiveThe Dallas Morning News...[A]nything but predictable. Many readers will relate as Olsson takes us into the life of a family where more than one heart has been pierced by time’s arrows.
