Mystic River – Dennis Lehane, 2001 ★★

SPOILER WARNING: People Get Hurt

One big taboo when writing reviews is the spoiler. A reliable rule of thumb is to avoid it whenever possible. In most cases, avoidance is no big deal. But what if a “no spoiler” rule blocks you from discussing 75-80 percent of the work in question? Can you sensibly raise questions about an ending when even discussing the underlying framework of that ending risks telling the reader more than they want to or should know?

The Story Of The Malakand Field Force – Winston Churchill, 1898 ★★★

Making His Mark in the British Raj

For many great literary figures, a first book is like a declaration of principles, a bugle call with resonances that echo for posterity yet can be scarcely audible at the time of publication.

That was my main takeaway from reading this, the earliest book by one of the most famous figures of his century, published even before that century had begun.

Winston Spencer Churchill was many things in a lifetime so packed with incident he was very nearly of retirement age before he got around to doing the stuff people best remember him for.

Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak, 1958 ★★

Forbidden Fruit Is Not Always Sweet

Does declaring a novel forbidden also somehow make it great? It’s a question I am left with after reading Doctor Zhivago, the novel that won its author a Nobel Prize which he couldn’t collect because he was under house arrest for writing Doctor Zhivago.

I can’t think of a better recommendation for a book than that; alas, making the right kind of enemy may be by far the best thing Doctor Zhivago has going for it.

The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game – Michael Lewis, 2009 ★★★

A Left Tackle Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

There seems nothing Michael Lewis does not know about his subjects. His way of writing about them is simultaneously zippy and deep, not an easy trick as any writer can tell you.

Of course, he goes on a bit sometimes, and every now and then he pulls a quip out of left field, but overall, he’s very engaging even when discussing data-driven topics like the bond market in Liar’s Poker and the tech boom in The New New Thing. Even when he writes about more accessible subjects, he seems to prefer a complicated approach. Moneyball is a sabermetrics treatise about a small-market baseball team struggling to maintain its relevance in the free-agency era.

In the book being discussed today, Lewis looks at pro football from the perspective of perhaps the most overlooked player on the field, the left tackle.

Wilkes Booth Came To Washington – Larry Starkey, 1976 ★★

Killing Lincoln: The "Blame Canada" Theory

Mystery still surrounds the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It’s not about who did it; but why.

This 1976 account suggests Lincoln’s murder was a kind of Hail Mary pass by the Confederacy, designed to trigger an outsized reaction from the North that would force Great Britain into the U. S. Civil War. 

To this end, author Larry Starkey challenges the conventional view of Lincoln’s assassination. Why did John Wilkes Booth, a nationally-famous tragedian, affect such a rage-inducing scheme without any discernable escape plan? Why did he make sure people recognized him after he shot the President, both at Ford’s Theatre and later on when he crossed a bridge to escape Washington, D. C.?

Absolute Friends – John le Carré, 2003 ½★

Absolute Mess

John le Carré’s Absolute Friends is his most discussed fictional foray into direct political argument, so much so you’d think from the press reviews that the whole book is nothing more than a 450-page denouncement of President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. 

Actually, the novel takes quite a long time being about that, or indeed, about anything else.

This is le Carré at his most frustrating and his most tedious.

Tell Me Why – Tim Riley, 1988 ★★★

Hunting Aeolian Cadences and Other Exotic Birds

Can anyone still remember what a Beatles song sounded like 29 years ago, before later iterations of this thing called life accreted upon their music and inevitably altered how we perceive it?

That’s why I enjoy this critical analysis by Tim Riley. It captures in amber prevailing notions about Beatles music during an era where I myself was just beginning to dope out what was so special about them.

Christine – Stephen King, 1983 ★★★½

Remembering My First Time with the King

Is Christine a clever chrome-plated gorefest a young and still-hungry Stephen King dashed off with deceptive ease? Or is it rather an early signpost of decline when the blockbuster horror writer was bottoming out on booze and coke?

Popular opinion favors the latter; I understand the argument. As for me, I love Christine.

This has little to do with it being a scary story about a demon car. For me, it’s something of a perverse nostalgia rush. I was in my last days of high school when I read this, my first King novel, and to say I related to the lead character, pathetic loser Arnie Cunningham, is an understatement. Every blow and insult directed at him echoed in my own memory well.

Cincinnatus: George Washington & The Enlightenment – Garry Wills, 1984 ★★

Unlocking the Washington Code

Do you know the many Classical allusions buried within artistic representations of George Washington? Are you interested in why Washington stands with his right (not left) arm outstretched in Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait, and what it says regarding how he was viewed by those he led?

Garry Wills lays out the meaning behind the iconography of our foremost Founding Father, in this hopping, learned, rambling analysis.

Anton Chekhov's Short Stories: A Norton Critical Edition – Edited by Ralph E. Matlaw, 1979 ★★★½

34 Stories, Many More Conclusions

Stuck in a baseball frame of mind with the playoffs underway and my team eliminated, I find myself pondering literary figures the way I do baseball stars. Some are known for home runs. Others are less spectacular but more consistent singles hitters.

After reading this old Norton collection containing 34 of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, I’m inclined to push against any Ruthian comparisons and place the famous Russian author with other great singles hitters; Eddie Collins, Rod Carew, Ichiro Suzuki, and Ben Jonson. Solid swing, but you expect the ball to stay in the park.

Five Days In November – Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin, 2013 ★★★★

So Close and Yet So Far

Like a few professional athletes and pretty much nobody else I know of, Clint Hill’s worst day at work unfolded before an audience of millions and echoes across posterity.

No wonder he waited so long to write about it.

“Could I have reacted faster?” he wonders. “Run faster? For the rest of my life I will live with the overwhelming guilt that I was unable to get there in time.”

High Stakes – Dick Francis, 1975 ★★½

Hard-Charging Mystery Hangs on at the Turn

If you know Dick Francis already and want more of his mystery fiction, here’s another gripping if formulaic excursion into the underside of life, connected in this case rather firmly to Francis’s home turf, the world of horse-racing.

If you are a Francis novice, High Stakes isn’t exactly the type to make you a fan.

A feeling of being run through the motions hangs over this crime novel, not unlike finding yourself inside one of the wheel-driven devices with which, we come to discover, the main character has made himself a mint.

Life On Earth – David Attenborough, 1979 ★★★★

Mother Nature Displays Her Charms

Phylum-hopping from microbes to coral reefs to orangutans, David Attenborough offers what may well be one of the most engaging tours ever taken of the natural world in this, a companion volume to his celebrated BBC series. The book details the evolutionary path of all earthly life, from prehistoric plants to present-day man.

Do you know that orchids may attract pollen-carrying insects by impersonating sex partners, or even carrion?

That a frog chorus can fill a swamp with a greater diversity of sound than one would get in a concert hall?

That a shearwater bird was taken from Wales to Boston and managed to fly itself back home?

The Story Of Henri Tod – William F. Buckley, Jr., 1984 ★½

Why Spy Fiction Should Be Left to the Professionals

Throughout the 1980s, while helming American conservativism’s flagship journal, National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. also had going a lucrative and well-regarded side project. It involved CIA agent Blackford Oakes, who gallivanted about the globe dealing with trouble.

This foray into spy fiction offered Buckley a chance to do two things: Emulate Frederick Forsyth, whose Day Of The Jackal Buckley greatly admired; and commentate on his trademark political concerns from a different perch.

As a showcase for Buckley’s wit, and a means of getting his conservative faithful to fork over something more than their annual NR subscription fee, Oakes books seem an inspired stratagem, but how are they for actual reading? Having just finished The Story Of Henri Tod, I can’t say I was much impressed.

Without Feathers – Woody Allen, 1975 ★★★½

Woody the Gag Man, Getting (Somewhat) Serious

Hard to believe, there was a time when Woody Allen could be enjoyed purely as a comic genius. Without Feathers presents him at the zenith of his comedy career, when he was becoming more overtly concerned with what it all meant but not so much that he stopped being playful.

Allen is all over the map in this 1975 collection, most of which first appeared in issues of The New Yorker, Playboy, and The New Republic earlier that decade.

Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige In The Shadows Of Baseball – Mark Ribowsky, 1994 ★★½

Sadder Than It Needed to Be

Did you ever read a biography and decide it was a good read only when it avoided the subject himself? I felt this way reading Mark Ribowsky's 1994 biography of Satchel Paige.

Perhaps the greatest control pitcher of any era, Paige won a lot of games as a barnstorming Negro League veteran and lasted long enough to play a decade in the Major Leagues after the color bar was dropped.

Yet old Satch made his fame truly outsized as much with his mouth. He told great stories and fed the press masterful sound bites that were equal parts whimsy and philosophy. "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you" was a famous one, the first half of which forms the title of Ribowsky's book. Yet a core thesis of this frustrating bio is how little Paige let people in on his real life.

The Daughter Of Time – Josephine Tey, 1951 ★½

Reconstructing Richard

What history got wrong Josephine Tey attempts to make right in this polemic disguised as a police procedural. Your miles may vary, but for me this was a tedious read even when I found worthwhile Tey's arguments regarding the nature of one of Great Britain's most infamous rulers.

Inspector Alan Grant, laid up with a broken leg after pursuing a criminal and stuck staring at the ceiling, kills time by investigating a double murder that occurred nearly 500 years before. Using a number of books at his bedside, as well as the research abilities of an able assistant, he probes the question of Richard III.

Was he really as bad a fellow as history said? What was the real story of his most famous crime, murdering two boys, his crown's rightful heir Prince Edward and his younger brother Duke Richard, in the Tower of London?

George Washington: Gentleman Warrior – Stephen Brumwell, 2012 ★★

Same Old George

Some write straightforward biographies of George Washington; others thesis-driven ruminations about his deeper meaning or presumed psychological makeup. Then there is Stephen Brumwell, who splits the difference and still misses the mark.

While George Washington: Gentleman Warrior does have a thesis, it's hardly original or revealing. That Washington was a product of his times, a social striver with a strong sense of honor and a focus on proving his self-worth in battle, isn't much of a leap from the established picture.

Perhaps recognizing this, Brumwell uses his thesis less as a springboard than backdrop for a conventional account of Washington's career, albeit one focused entirely on his time as a soldier. Hence the subtitle. If you want Washington the president or hemp farmer, go elsewhere.

The Return Of The Native – Thomas Hardy, 1878 ★★

A Character and Setting in Search of a Plot

Every good character in fiction deserves a name as singularly memorable as Eustacia Vye, and a setting as breathtakingly depicted as Egdon Heath.

You know what else is nice to have? An engaging story that doesn't play out like a series of tragic contrivances.

As Thomas Hardy would be the first to remind us, you can't have everything.

Howard Hughes: The Secret Life – Charles Higham, 1993 [No Stars]

Ain't No Fun Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire

Howard Hughes had a lot of sex in his life. He also flew planes, built businesses, and made some money, but those things didn't matter as much to Charles Higham in 1993 when he published this sleazy and highly speculative bio of the famous 20th-century American tycoon.

Howard Hughes: The Secret Life was the credited source for the 2004 Oscar-nominated film on Hughes, The Aviator, which was directed by Martin Scorcese and starred Leonardo DiCaprio. You remember all those gay sex scenes in The Aviator, like, well, um, come to think of it, I don't either, unless you count the time Jude Law as Errol Flynn plucks a pea off Leo's plate. No, I guess that really doesn't count.

Which goes to show you you can't judge a book by its film adaptation.

Shout! The Beatles In Their Generation – Philip Norman, 1981 ★★★

The Act You've Known for All These Years

The murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980 was the biggest thing that could have happened to a book called Shout! Coming out just weeks later, Shout! was effectively marketed as the first serious journalistic account of the rise and dissolution of Lennon’s famous band, the Beatles.

People mourning Lennon’s death, or simply curious about the global outcry surrounding his passing, proved a ready audience for the book by first-time author Philip Norman.

Comstock Lode – Louis L'Amour, 1981 ★★★★

L'Amour Goes Long, Successfully

Walking steady to face down a dangerous hombre, sharing coffee under the stars with people happy to take a bullet for you; catching up with a girl from your past who turns out both beautiful and fascinated by you: Reading this made me feel like a 12-year-old. Comstock Lode is pure escapism, and I lapped up every page.

The novel presents familiar territory for legendary Western author Louis L’Amour: Val Trevallion comes to the American West from Cornwall, England with his parents, who seek their fortune in an untamed land.

Perjury – Allen Weinstein, 1978 ★★★★

Probing the Fundamental Why of Alger Hiss

Once upon a time, people wondered whether U. S. State Department official Alger Hiss transferred stolen government documents to Soviet intelligence. Then the question became more a matter of why.

Like why did Hiss steal the documents, and why did he keep lying about it after he served his time, right up until he died?

“The fundamental why” is the way Joseph Conrad put it in his epic novel about the nature of guilt, Lord Jim, contrasting it with “the superficial how.” Allan Weinstein quotes that passage in his famous takedown of Hiss, Perjury, which pretty much laid out the how part to most people’s satisfaction more than 30 years ago. Since then, he has never as satisfactorily addressed the why.

Needful Things – Stephen King, 1991 ★½

Let the Buyer Beware

Imagine a whole town crammed to the gills with Gollums; a countryside alive to the steady murmurings of “My precioussss” every evening as the lights go down. If that sort of thing impresses you as profound rather than monotonous, Stephen King has just the novel for you.

As the setting for several King novels and shorter stories, Castle Rock, Maine has seen a lot of crazy things. Now it’s Leland Gaunt’s turn to warp its reality.

Gaunt is the proprietor of a new store, “Needful Things,” a sort of curio shop offering offbeat merchandise catering to the special desires of a diverse array of local residents. The price is always right, too; just what the would-be buyer has in hand.

Dead Solid Perfect – Dan Jenkins, 1974 ★★★½

Tee Offs & Put Ons

People who pick up Dead Solid Perfect expecting a serious endeavor at sports fiction need to understand: This may be a golf novel, but it’s also a Dan Jenkins novel.

Jenkins’ gimmick with sportswriting was not unlike Dean Martin’s about singing: It was something he seemed to do on the way to the bar, preferably with a few bawdy jokes thrown in.

Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-15 ★½

Trudging Through a Classic

The book wore me out long before it reached its merciful conclusion, its rambling narrative and repetitive prose making each of its more than a thousand pages like another millstone against my soul. 

And the worst part? All my long nights of reading, I carried with me the guilt I should be enjoying this.

Who am I not to admire Don Quixote?

And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie, 1939 ★★★★½

Putting on a Master Class in Murder

The image of Agatha Christie today is so often interlaid with that of crumpets and cosies, wet-weather ruminations, and dignified Belgians with luxuriant moustaches that one might almost suspect her the author of Tintin comics rather than some of the darkest and most fiendish mysteries of our time.

A quick corrective is on tap in the form of this, one of her blackest and most revered thrillers.

Johnny Carson – Henry Bushkin, 2013 ★★½

Keeping Uneasy Company with America's Host

One day, while being interviewed by a British journalist for an article that would appear in a February, 1978 issue of The New Yorker, the celebrated talk-show host Johnny Carson gave a strange answer to a routine question. Asked whom he regarded as his best friend, Carson named his lawyer, Henry Bushkin.

This must have come as a surprise to many readers, accustomed as they were to Carson’s smooth repartee with a wide range of guests on NBC-TV’s “The Tonight Show.” It certainly surprised Bushkin. 

But it won’t surprise anyone reading Bushkin’s memoir of life with Carson. By the time the anecdote occurs, almost halfway through the book, one senses Carson was a man without much in the way of friends or sentiment.

Hub – Robert Herring, 1981 ★½

Reflections on a Childhood Deferred

Sometimes childhood feels like a present that never quite got unwrapped. I had that feeling twice over with Hub.

Our title character is a pre-teen boy who lives in a river town in Arkansas. He seems the product of a loving, relatively successful family, but his life is centered around two other people.

One is Uncle Ethel, a wise old man who lives on an isolated island, alone but for his aged dog and his shotgun. The other is a trouble-making pal named Hitesy, who badgers Hub to do things he knows he shouldn’t, goading him with the magic word “chicken” whenever Hub hesitates. Hitesy brags his father doesn’t care what he does, and dares Hub to follow his example.

The Deceiver – Frederick Forsyth, 1991 ★★★★½

When a Man's Got a Job to Do

Sometimes it requires a shorter format for a craftsman’s quality to shine through. Not to take anything away from the novelist behind such classic long-form spy-fiction exercises as The Day Of The Jackal and The Fourth Protocol, but with Frederick Forsyth, there's something to be said for the merit of small packages, which is just what The Deceiver delivers.

Published in 1991, just as the Cold War was winding down, The Deceiver is designed as a look back at a series of cases late in the career of a top British spymaster. It’s oddly similar to another book published the same year.

In The Secret Pilgrim, John le Carré had his most famous spy character, George Smiley, deliver an informal dissertation regarding lessons learned to a group of English espionage students, which unspooled as a series of short stories. The same is true here, except in this case it's no casual gathering that's the setting, but a tense tribunal to determine whether to ashcan our protagonist as part of a forgotten past.

The Diary Of A Young Girl – Anne Frank, 1952 ★★★½

All She Wanted Was to Live Forever

Anne Frank belongs to the world, something truer today than ever before. Seventy years after the year of her confirmed death, her famous memoir of a life in hiding fell out of copyright law on January 1, 2016, meaning it can now be printed by anyone.

“I want to go on living even after my death!” she wrote in one of her diary entries. And now she shall, in cyberspace, with people free to arrange her thoughts and dreams with hypertext links and perhaps a GIF animation showing the five seconds when Anne poked her head out a window and was caught on a home movie.