David Denby

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | David Denby

Can a historical novel be morally serious, even tragic, and also playful at the same time? For a writer of fiction, history is a dangerous thing to play with—one doesn’t want to be trivial or false. History itself might render judgment. Yet Daniel Kehlmann’s new book, “The Director” (Summit), suggests that such a combination is not only possible but, in the hands of a writer with saturnine wit, exhilarating.

3 weeks ago | urldefense.com | David Denby

Kehlmann has re-created the filmmaking career of G. W. Pabst, the brilliant Austrian director who, in the early Nazi period, made it out of Europe to America. But then, calamitously, Pabst went back. Had he stayed in Hollywood, he might have experienced the relative freedom enjoyed by such émigré directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Billy Wilder.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | David Denby |Henry Holt

In his paean to another age, David Denby studies four icons who defined American culture in the second half of the 20th century. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. EMINENT JEWS: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, by David DenbyEvery book deserves to be judged on its own terms: Did the author accomplish what he or she set out to do?

2 months ago | kirkusreviews.com | David Denby

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | David Denby

Leonard Bernstein’s way with orchestras that wouldn’t give him what he wanted was usually imploring, even beseeching. He was disappointed—the musicians were not so much failing him, the conductor, as failing the composer, failing the music. But on one occasion, his disappointment turned to anger. In 1972, he was working with the Vienna Philharmonic on Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Mahler had been the head of the Vienna Court Opera and had conducted the Philharmonic from 1897 to 1907.