The National Book Review

The National Book Review is an online magazine made by book enthusiasts for fellow book lovers. It serves as a platform for discussing literature and ideas, highlighting noteworthy new releases through our "5 Hot Books" segment. Our goal is to showcase exceptional books that deserve more recognition, featuring reviews, author interviews, and various articles that aim to draw attention to those hidden gems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

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REVIEW: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Biden's Decline and How it Helped Give Us Trump Again — The National Book Review

2 weeks ago | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (Penguin Press, 352 pages)By Paul Markowitz With the election of 2024 still in our rear-view mirror, it is appropriate and timely that we reconsider what we knew and when we knew it about the decline of Joe Biden prior to last year's election.
REVIEW: A Fresh and Pragmatic Approach to the Intractable Problem of Gun Violence — The National Book Review

3 weeks ago | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun ViolenceJens LudwigUniversity of Chicago Press 394 pp. Gun violence is one of our most intractable problems – and one of the most tragic. Day after day, the news is filled with lives senselessly cut short. Our society has come up with a parade of solutions – tougher sentences for gun crimes, dedicated anti-gang squads, and more – but they have not made a dent in the problem.
REVIEW: In Search of the Miraculous, Mysterious Aimee Semple McPherson — The National Book Review

3 weeks ago | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Claire Hoffman, “Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)My friends all say they’ve heard of Aimee Semple McPherson, although they aren’t sure why. Something to do with religion, they say. Some kind of scandal, they add. Even if memories are vague, they’re sure she’s one of those 20th-century characters likely to show up as a mid-priced Jeopardy question.
REVIEW: Ali Smith's 'Gliff' is a Dystopian Novel that Focuses on the Kids — The National Book Review

1 month ago | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

GliffBy Ali SmithPantheon 281 pp. By Jim SwearingenIt might seem somewhat rash to argue that the field of futuristic-dystopian novels has been picked clean. Writers will of course always craft new riffs on timeless stories. But technical advances in monitoring and surveillance that have occurred in recent years have surpassed virtually every tyrannical gadget in the fictional canon.
Q&A: Alice Austen Talks About Her New Novel Set in Holocaust-Era Belgium — The National Book Review

2 months ago | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Alice Austen’s staggering debut novel 33 Place Brugmann, set during the Nazi invasion of Belgium, alternates narrators between residents of the titular Brussels apartment as each one; Jewish and gentile, European and American, children and adults; reckon with what their future under occupation may look like and what they must do to survive it.
Q&A: Navigating a Life Through Books: An Interview with Donna Seaman — The National Book Review

Mar 3, 2025 | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Several years ago, I attended a riveting Chicago Public Library event for Donna Seaman’s groundbreaking book, Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. In person, Seaman exudes a quiet intensity, easily ignited by her many interests, and marked by her quick wit. In the huge auditorium, to a rapt audience, she shared photographs and tales of the seven accomplished artists she had spent years researching.
Q&A: Talking with Sasha Vasilyuk about Ukraine, Nazi Prisoners, and Novel Writing — The National Book Review

Feb 14, 2025 | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

The figure at the center of Sasha Vasilyuk’s stunning debut novel Your Presence is Mandatory is Yefim Shulman: a veteran, academic, and patriarch of a Ukrainian Jewish family. Following his death, Yefim’s family discovers that he had been taken prisoner by the Nazis while serving in World War II, a secret he had kept his entire adult life. Shocked and confused, his family must now reckon with what this discovery reveals about their father, their country, and themselves.
REVIEW: An Extraordinary Story of Land, Money, and Energy in the New West — The National Book Review

Jan 13, 2025 | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

By Ann FabianThere’s a note “about the author” at the end of Amy Gamerman’s remarkable book, The Crazies: The Catttleman, the Wind Prospector and a War Out West. Gamerman “has written about real estate and culture for the Wall Street Journal for more than two decades”—twin beats that have given her a perfect skill set for this meticulously reported story about a decades-long lawsuit over wind turbines in the shadows of Montana’s Crazy Mountains.
Q and A: Bach, Burns, and Bildungsroman: An Interview with Justin Courter, Author of 'Cadenza' — The National Book Review

Nov 12, 2024 | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Each year I receive two or three dozen forthcoming books from writers or their publicists who are hoping I’ll read and help to promote these titles. It’s flattering to be asked, and although I wish I could, I don’t have time to read them all. Most readers know, whether or not they’re also writers, that the number of books published each year is staggeringly high.
REVIEW: An Unforgettable Novel of South Africa, a Queer 'Trouple,' and Loneliness — The National Book Review

Oct 19, 2024 | thenationalbookreview.com | Adam Cohen

Award-winning Afrikaans writer S. J. Naude’s slim, stunning Fathers and Fugitives (with a very Turgenev-like title) starts with a queer throuple. If the unsettling novel were a rom-com, the meet cute moment would occur when Daniel, a gay journalist living in London, encountered a same-sex Serbian couple—Oliver and Yugo—at the Tate Modern during a retrospective exhibit of Agnes Martin, an American minimalist. Oliver is a film enthusiast; Yugo, a waiter.