An unconventional biography of an unconventional character. Rather than focus on timelines or family trees, Posnanski tries to get at Houdini as a legend, as an historical figure.
REVIEW: ARTHUR AND SHERLOCK
Rather than a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, this is a history of all of the people surrounding the world’s greatest consulting detective. Instead of trying to encompass a whole (very accomplished) life, Sims chooses to take a magnifying glass to Conan Doyle’s early professional life as a student, doctor and writer, up until the…
ACCENT: AMERICAN GHOST by Hannah Nordhaus
I am very lucky to have a grandmother and a father who are very into genealogy and ancestry. She held on to family quilts and dug up photos of relatives long since gone. I have the strange privilege of looking back on this people, 150 years ago, knowing that although we never met, we are…
REVIEW: CARELESS PEOPLE by Sarah Churchwell
This is a must-read for any Gatsby enthusiast, English lit student, or lover of the Jazz Age. Churchwell carefully pieces together very specific events in the Fitzgeralds’ lives and relates them to Scott’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby. These are not wild hunches or bizarre theories. She draws from scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, letters from friends,…
GIVEAWAY: THE REAL JANE AUSTEN
GIVEAWAY I have TWO copies available for this title, which I reviewed here. Description from the publisher: Unlike the conventional cradle to grave biography, THE REAL JANE AUSTEN focuses on a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in both the life and work of Jane Austen. As described in The New York Times Book…