True CrimeAt Critics at Large: my review of The Leopold and Loeb Files, concerning a crime that after nearly a century will not let us go.
CrossfireAt Critics at Large: my review of Michelle Dean's Sharp, concerning ten woman writers "who made an art of having an opinion."
Coming from CambridgeportAt Critics at Large: my review of Ryan H. Walsh’s Astral Weeks, concerning Van Morrison, the Lyman cult, and everything weird and...
Cultural defoliationMy review of the controversial Jann Wenner biography, concerning “the baby-boomer visionary whose singular will to power, rakish...
The mist of other songsToday at Critics at Large, my review of Nicholas Jennings's Lightfoot, concerning the balladeer who maintained just the right emotional...
Wicked and bristling with dotsMy review of David Thomson’s Television: A Biography, concerning the medium described by Norman Mailer as “a small and modest malignancy,...
The mystery of geniusMy review of Mary V. Dearborn's Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, concerning perhaps the greatest American writer of the 20th century.
Obscure and beautiful factsAt Critics at Large: my review of Paul La Farge's new novel, The Night Ocean, concerning H.P. Lovecraft, pseudocide, and the stories that...
"A strange and distasteful project"At Critics at Large, my review of Gay Talese’s The Voyeur’s Motel, concerning a curious (in both senses) Colorado gentleman who spied on...
Things went downAt Critics at Large, my review of Joel Selvin’s Altamont, concerning the worst day in the history of a certain speedway.