Tag Archives: Book Review

LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA – SEPTEMBER 2026 PREVIEW

Front cover by by Sarah Farquhar for September 2026.

LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA: The latest issue features…

Rerouted

A bit of welcome news Kyle Wyatt

Homer on the Range

From Sophocles to Danielle Smith Troy Nahumko

Poisoned Ivy

Where does higher education go next? Spencer Morrison

Man of the Hour

Sandford Fleming’s cables and clocks Michael Ledger-Lomas

Ranks and Files

The next move in championship chess Mark Plotkin

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – AUGUST 13, 2026 PREVIEW

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features

An Uncomplicated Man – Emily Wilson

The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan.

Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem is an entertaining way to hide from the high temperatures for a few hours. Nolan’s trademark jumps and twists in the narrative structure are relatively easy to follow, and appropriate for The Odyssey, a narrative of tales nested in tales. My teenagers had a good time. Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance by Felix Platter, translated by Seán Jennett


The Northern Routes to Kingship: 
A History of Scandinavia AD 180-550 by Dagfinn Skre


The Boundless Deep: 
Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes

The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926-2026 by Callum Cant and Matthew Lee

The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that Shook Britain by David Torrance

Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 by Jonathan Schneer

Britain’s Revolutionary Summer: The General Strike of 1926 by Edd Mustill

LITERARY REVIEW MAGAZINE – AUGUST 2026 PREVIEW

LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features ‘What the New World did for Us’

An Epic for the Ages

The Odyssey By Christopher Nolan (dir)

Letters from a Cataclysm

Orator: The Life of Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic By Catharine Edwards

Temples of Doom

Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric By Paul Cartledge
Hubris: Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens By David Stuttard

Knowing Classics

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature By Emily Wilson

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – AUGUST 20, 2026

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features

Artful Weaving

The most authentic thing about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is its densely braided narrative, but its tormented hero sounds like the heroes of Christopher Nolan movies.

Whose Party?

As Democratic Socialists rack up primary victories, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party looks increasingly out of touch.

Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become too high.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

Out of the Rubble

In novels written immediately after World War II, Wolfgang Koeppen mined the conscience of Germany.

Pigeons on the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

The Hothouse by Wolfgang Koeppen, translated from the German and with an afterword by Michael Hofmann, with an introduction by Pankaj Mishra

Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen, translated from the German and with an afterword by Michael Hofmann, with an introduction by Joshua Cohen

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – JULY 23, 2026

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features

An Uncertain Triumphalism

America’s centennial in 1876 was celebrated with a grand exhibition that projected an image of national unity and inventiveness in the anxious aftermath of civil war and recession.

Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future by Fergus M. Bordewich

Hungary: The Flood

Peter Magyar’s landslide electoral victory in April made clear that after sixteen years, Hungarians were tired of Viktor Orbán.

Space Oddity

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism examines how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit.

Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff

Song of Our Cells

Though a mystery to Darwin in his lifetime, the constant mutation of our genes is what allows for life’s magnificent diversity.

Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health by Roxanne Khamsi

LITERARY REVIEW MAGAZINE – JULY 2026 PREVIEW

LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features ‘Lincoln’s path to power’…

 Delicacy & Steel – Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln

By Matthew Pinsker

Not So Soft Power – Freedom Round the Globe: How the World Made the American Revolution

By Sarah M S Pearsall

Highway Gothic – This Land Is Your Land: On a Road Trip to Make Sense of America

By Beverly Gage

LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA – JULY/AUGUST 2026 PREVIEW

Literary Review of Canada The latest issue features…

For All to Hear

A collective wake-up call by Kyle Wyatt

Pitch Perfect?

On the promise and perils of global soccer by James Brooke-Smith

From the 500s with Love

Remember peanuts and Cracker Jack? by Stacey May Fowles

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – JUNE 25, 2026 PREVIEW

The Paper

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features

Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs by Alec Nevala-Lee
The First Fascist: The Life and Legacy of the Marquis de Morès by Sergio Luzzatto

Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev 
by Maxim Gorky, translated by Bryan Karetnyk


The Masquerade: 
A History of Extravagance and Intrigue by Meghan Kobza

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – JUNE 25, 2026

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Fintan O’Toole on The Emptiness of Greatness….

Gulliver’s Warning

Like Gulliver in Lilliput, “greatness” in the political realm depends on the existence of a group deemed puny or weak.

LITERARY REVIEW MAGAZINE – JUNE 2026 PREVIEW

LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features Peter Moore on George Forster * Anne Perkins on the Balfour family * William Whyte on British dons * Ian Thomson on the fall of the USSR * Joe Moshenska on Spinoza * Jeremy Treglown on Juan Carlos of Spain * D J Taylor on Henrietta Moraes * Howard Davies on recession * Martin Vander Weyer on Goldman Sachs * Piers Brendon on disinformation * Richard Vinen on Kissinger * Bettina Bildhauer on medieval health * John Mullan on Emily Brontë* Joseph Hone on Jonathan Swift * Duncan Fallowell on Lady Chatterley * 

The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity

By Andrea Wulf

An exemplary tour of the High Enlightenment might go something like this. You’d begin in the streets of 1760s London to feel the pulse of Georgian commerce. You’d then hop aboard one of Captain Cook’s colliers and cruise through the Pacific, having encounters every day. Returning to Europe you might watch Benjamin Franklin in diplomatic action at Passy and dine with Casanova in Vienna, before sailing up the Rhine with Humboldt. Having inspected the Soho Manufactory in Birmingham and admired the picturesque scenery of the Peak District, you’d cross the Channel just in time for the grand and bloody finale in Paris. 

Twilight of the Dons: British Intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism

By Colin Kidd

Arriving as an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1961, Terry Eagleton was both overawed and underwhelmed by his supervisor, a man he calls Greenway in his memoir. ‘Greenway was the first truly civilised man I had ever encountered,’ Eagleton recalls.

This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë

By Deborah Lutz

We know so little about Emily Brontë. There are just a few snapshots, like the vivid recollection of her sister Charlotte’s great friend Ellen Nussey: ‘Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely loveable … one of her rare expressive looks was something to remember through life, there was such a depth of soul and feeling..