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1 week ago | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Book Review Mark Twain By Ron ChernowPenguin Press: 1,200 pages, $45If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Mark Twain was America’s first celebrity, a multiplatform entertainer loved and recognized all over the world. Fans from America to Europe to Australia bought his books and flocked to his one-man shows, and his potent doses of humor and hard truth enthralled both the highborn and the humble.
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1 week ago | 
yahoo.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Mark Twain wrote literary classics such as "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," but as Ron Chernow's hefty biography of him shows, he also nursed grudges and suffered great losses. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)Mark Twain was America’s first celebrity, a multiplatform entertainer loved and recognized all over the world. Fans from America to Europe to Australia bought his books and flocked to his one-man shows, and his potent doses of humor and hard truth enthralled both the highborn and the humble.
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1 month ago | 
kirkusreviews.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Journalist Michael Luo is an American success story. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, the Harvard-educated Luo has climbed the career ladder of journalism to one of its most prestigious posts—he’s an executive editor of the New Yorker, in charge of the magazine’s online operation.
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Feb 8, 2025 | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Anyone who has embarked on a search for their ancestors knows the feeling of just wanting more — more knowledge, more insight, more proof of lives lived. Who were these long-gone people, beyond a paper trail of census records, wills and marriage licenses? What did they care about? What forces of history shaped them?
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Feb 8, 2025 | 
yahoo.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Anyone who has embarked on a search for their ancestors knows the feeling of just wanting more — more knowledge, more insight, more proof of lives lived. Who were these long-gone people, beyond a paper trail of census records, wills and marriage licenses? What did they care about? What forces of history shaped them?
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Dec 27, 2024 | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Book Review Mothers and Sons By Adam HaslettLittle, Brown: 336 pages, $29If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Peter Fischer buries his personal demons in work, work and more work. An immigration lawyer in Manhattan, his job is one long emergency: He advocates for asylees seeking legal standing and safe harbor in America. Success means a new and far more secure life. Failure means deportation.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Book Review Highway Thirteen: Stories By Fiona McFarlaneFarrar, Straus and Giroux: 255 pages, $27If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. A serial killer rends a jagged hole in the fabric of our moral universe. How can someone commit a murder, then another and another, and how can they get away with it? Where does the impulse to kill begin, and why?
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Apr 18, 2024 | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Book Review Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O'Sullivan, America's Most Mysterious War Photographer By Robert SullivanFarrar, Straus and Giroux: 448 pages, $32If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. There are a few verifiable truths about Civil War photographer Timothy O’Sullivan. He was born in 1840 in Ireland.
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
latimes.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
Book Review The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook By Hampton SidesDoubleday: 432 pages, $35If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. The story of Capt. James Cook’s third voyage has all the elements of a Greek tragedy — hubris, good intentions gone awry, fatal error.
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
yahoo.com | Mary Ann Gwinn
The story of Capt. James Cook’s third voyage has all the elements of a Greek tragedy — hubris, good intentions gone awry, fatal error. The English sea captain, an old man by 18th century standards, had already made two worldwide voyages of discovery when he was coaxed by his admirers into one more journey. Though his expedition touched down in some of the world’s most pristine, magical places, it set in motion their decay by introducing lethal diseases and invasive species.
