Washington Independent Review of Books

1 week ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Blake Gopnik

“The Barnes.”The culturally literate — readers of the Independent, for example — command a range of stock phrases they can bandy about as needed: “white whale,” “theory of relativity,” “for whom the bell tolls.” And more likely than not (depending on age, reading habits, line of work, and degree of inebriation), they can also retrieve an associated tag: Moby-Dick or maybe even “obsessive pursuit,” etc. But much of the time, that’s probably the extent of it.

2 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Eugene Meyer

Is it good for the Jews? The question, somewhat nervously asked by and among American Jews, is not just Borscht Belt shtick. It reflects the chronic insecurity of Jews in America. Even among those who are secular and assimilated, there is always an underlying fear of resurgent antisemitism unfairly triggered by stereotypes and unleased by external events beyond their control. The stresses posed by slavery and the Civil War were no different. Like other Americans, Jews on both sides held strong views.

3 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Darrell Delamaide

The British are big on detective series, whether it’s television or books. There is the wonderful TV show “Shetland,” based on the book series by Ann Cleeves, but there’s also a raft of others. A recent find is the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths about a forensic archeologist in Norfolk, England, who heads the department at the fictional University of North Norfolk.

3 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Sarah Kendzior

Sometimes, being a book reviewer feels like being an oracle. Advance copies of tomorrow’s ideas arrive in the mail, and the reviewer takes a guess at how readers will perceive them when they finally enter the world. Of course, this sounds a little self-important, as a survey from the National Endowment for the Arts showed that fewer than half of Americans read even one book in 2022.

4 weeks ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Russell Shorto

“As New York goes, so goes the nation” is more than a Big Apple brag. It’s the bellwether of the country, highlighted by the city that takes bold initiatives and establishes the national pulse. Some might dispute that point today, but Russell Shorto makes a persuasive argument for it in his eighth book, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America.