Christopher Hitchens and Fights Worth Having
You can smell the cigarette ash and Johnnie Walker Black Label on the pages of A Hitch in Time, a gleefully pugilistic posthumous Christopher Hitchens anthology.
essays
The ABCs of Barbara Stanwyck
The “ABC” structure and diverse archival material in The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck make it among the most interesting texts released in 2023.
In ‘How Far the Light Reaches’ Ocean Science and Memoir Make Magic
How Far the Light Reaches weaves struggles with identity – gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and body image – with the immense diversity of marine life, revealing new ways to think about ourselves.
Caroline Hagood’s ‘Weird Girls’ Prods the Monster Within to Snarling Life
All women should have easy access to Caroline Hagood’s bloody but unbowed heart of feminist grotesquerie, Weird Girls.
Oscar Wilde Envisions Our Post-Pandemic Socialist Future
Millennials and GenZ had time to contemplate the real harms wrought by capitalism during the pandemic shutdown. Perhaps they might read Oscar Wilde, now.
Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ Essays Pandemic with Erudite Wit and Compassion
Zadie Smith's Intimations is an essay collection of gleaming, wry, and crisp prose that wears its erudition lightly but takes flight on both everyday and lofty matters.
‘High Cotton’ Is Culturally Astute and Progressive
Kristie Robin Johnson's collection of essays in High Cotton dismantle linear thinking with shrewdness and empathy.
Patrick Madden’s ‘Disparates’ Makes Sense in These Crazy Times
There's no social distancing with Patrick Madden's hilarious Disparates. While reading these essays, you'll feel like he's in the room with you.
Joan Didion’s Crystal-Clear Vision Only Got Better with Age
Reading the Library of America’s comprehensive anthology, Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s, is like walking out of the rain and into a compelling time warp.
In ‘Afterimages’ Laura Mulvey Returns to Feminist Film Criticism with Fresh Insights
Lauley Mulvey’s Afterimages draws together her recent writing on women and film to create an engaging collection that is both timely and time-centred.
‘Vanity Fair’s Women on Women’ Is a Missed Opportunity
Women writing about famous women does not a feminist or otherwise interesting collection make.
Debut Essay Collection ‘Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now’ Takes a Slice from the Americana Songbook
Although Andre Perry's essays in his debut, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, traverse various geographical journeys, they are, overall, ballads, images from the self, the man isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land.