by envisionmg | Mar 28, 2016 | Non-fiction, Rachel Reviews
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion....
by envisionmg | Mar 24, 2016 | Fiction, Jim Reviews
Trinity Six is a modern spy novel that hangs on the search for the fabled Sixth Man. In the 1930s, the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) recruited five spies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Now known as the Cambridge Five, these individuals– Kim Philby, Donald...
by envisionmg | Mar 21, 2016 | Fiction, Rachel Reviews, Staff Review
City on Fire is a behemoth of a novel – clocking in at over 900 pages – but it feels overwrought and excessive, as if author Garth Risk Hallberg simply wanted the world to know that he was capable of writing such an opus. The core action – which spans about seven...
by envisionmg | Mar 17, 2016 | History, Reading Lists
Over the past year or so I’ve noticed an uptick in books being published about Irish history. It only occurred to me last week that the reason for this uptick was probably the up coming hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising (April 24-29). Given the holiday...
by envisionmg | Mar 14, 2016 | Michelle Reviews, Non-fiction, YA
You’re on the hunt for a lighthearted or uplifting book to read while winter wanes; your eager eye has wandered here, to this title by National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson, but I must tell you: Symphony for the City of the Dead is neither lighthearted, nor...
