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Book Review: Horse

Posted by Staff on Sunday, August 21, 2022

Review by Robert McCool

Horse, A Novel (ISBN; 978-03999-56296-9) by Australian author Geraldine Brooks tells a tale of one of the greatest racehorses ever, focused through the dark camera obscura of slavery, when people could be owned like horses. This book is about that ownership.

The book tells the true history of a horse and its young Black groom named Jarret in 1850, before the Civil War. Jarret is there when the foal Darley is born. Darley's name soon becomes Lexington, and Jarret loves and stays with the horse through the animal's whole life.

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Book Review: The Woman in the Library

Posted by Staff on Sunday, August 14, 2022

By Robert McCool

The cast is small, but the mystery is large.

While police check out why a woman let out a blood curdling scream in the Boston Public Library Reading Room, four people seated at a table together get to know each other and their writings. These are the primary characters in a book under construction by a woman named Hannah, whom we do not know, although we do hear from an unasked-for critic who gives her advice by email.

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Book Review: Navajo mythology comes alive after the climate apocalypse

Posted by Staff on Sunday, August 7, 2022

Review by Robert McCool

If you have read Tony Hillerman you know the legends and folktales about immortal beings living in the Sacred Mountains that surround the Dine'tah (the Navajo reservation). Those same mountains protected the parched desert that is now the Dine'tah when the apocalypse drowned most of the world with the “Big Water.” And, after the Energy Wars there wasn't enough fuel to maintain the lifestyle we enjoy now. The world lay fallow and empty without an apology from anyone. These are dystopian tales.

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Book Review: Navajo mythology comes alive after the climate apocalypse

Posted by Staff on Sunday, July 31, 2022

By Robert McCool

If you have read Tony Hillerman you know the legends and folktales about immortal beings living in the Sacred Mountains that surround the Dine'tah (Navajo reservation). Those same mountains protected the parched desert that is now the Dine'tah when the apocalypse drowned most of the world with the “Big Water.” And, after the Energy Wars there wasn't enough fuel to maintain the lifestyle we enjoy now. The world lay fallow and empty without an apology from anyone. These are dystopian tales.

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Book Review: Chasing History

Posted by Staff on Sunday, July 24, 2022

By Robert McCool
Icon Columnist

“A kid in the newsroom” is the subtitle of Carl Bernstein's new book, a memoir of his start in journalism. Chasing History (Thorndike Press, ISBN- 13: 978-4328-9865-6) is Bernstein's account of his own history during a most interesting time in our country's historically turbulent 1950s and early ‘60s.

The time frame starts while Eisenhower is president and John F. Kennedy is a senator. Richard Nixon is vice president. The country is stagnant because of Eisenhower's tired style of ruling, after World War II's intensity and death toll.

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Book Review: Life and death in the Serengeti

Posted by Staff on Sunday, July 17, 2022

By Robert McCool
Icon Columnist

I have read and reviewed more of Chris Bohjalian's books than any other author. Midwives, The Flight Attendant, The Plot, The Night Strangers, The Guest Room, and Hour of the Witch, just to name a few. Why? Because he's an excellent writer.

And he doesn't disappoint with his latest work, The Lioness (Doubleday, ISBN: 978-03855-4482-5).

This time his recipe is to put a group of Hollywood friends and relatives in Kenya, Africa on a photo safari during a time of upheaval in the neighboring countries. The time is 1964.

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