Reviews
Chasing Beauty
I just finished reading Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Natalie Dykstra. Here’s the short version—wow! Here’s the slightly longer version: Beautiful prose. Rich with insights. Wonderful storytelling. Not necessarily in that order I did not go into Chasing Beauty cold. Natalie and I became deadline buddies and fast friends in the…
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Another Book That Sat on the To-Be-Read Shelves for Far too Long: Fast-Talking Dames
Fast-Talking Dames by Maria DiBattista is both a study of and homage to the fast-talking heroines of Hollywood comedies in the 1930s and 1940s. Like me, DiBattista discovered the women she writes about in her early teens, when she watched old movies after school and late at night. Like me, she saw them as a…
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From the Archives: Stranger in the Shogun’s City
Over the last few weeks the book Stranger in the Shogun’s City has come up several times in conversations with fellow history buffs and book nerds. Each time, my response has been “I love that book!” And after a while I decided it was time to tell those of you who didn’t read this review…
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