What happens when you put people with contempt for government in charge of the government? Lewis takes his eye for the untold story into the unglamorous—but, as he demonstrates, desperately necessary—reaches of the federal Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce departments to show just how indifferent the Trump administration has been to the everyday tasks of governing: …
from The Seattle Review of Books August 22, 2018 by Dawn McCarra Bass Phinney Books to open new store in Madison Park Phinney Books owner Tom Nissley is opening a new shop: Madison Books, slated for a space in the heart of Madison Park. It’s an exciting development; Madison Park has been without an independent bookstore …
The headline to a review I wrote of this book when it came out in 2004 read, “Caribou Hair Everywhere,” and I can’t think of three words that better describe it. Raised by a father who moved from the Midwest to a sod igloo in remote, northwest Alaska, young Cutuk grows toward an inevitable choice …
This is a book framed by grief—Broks’s wife died of cancer in middle age—but it is not the usual memoir of loss. Broks has long been a scientist of consciousness, and he sees death, as well as the miracle of waking life, through a bracingly unsentimental lens of neural activity. Which might make for a …
Where? Oakland, mostly: the center of a dozen or so lives, all of them Native American by some calculation, though each is working to define that for themselves. They are, in Orange’s words, “Urban Indians,” knowing city streets better than any other landscape, but few of them feel at home anywhere. As in Colum McCann’s Let …
This is a little book, written in a modest style, but its claims are large. Despite her title, Ginzburg wants us to set aside the “little virtues” of frugality, caution, and tact for the greater ones of love, courage, and generosity. The essays were written between 1944 and 1962 in the wake of personal and …
Settle in quickly when you begin this little book, because it’s going to charge out of the gate, whether you’re buckled in or not. It begins with a stumble for its main character, Mara, which soon becomes a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The disease moves fast, but so does Mara, who, decisive in this and …
Jonathan Evison, the author of soon-to-be classic Northwest novels such as The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving and West of Here, will be at Island Books on Mercer Island, WA on Thursday, Thursday May 3rd at 6:30pm, with his new novel, Lawn Boy. The store writes, “Anyone who was present for his last visit won’t soon …
It’s always a surprise to me that our infinitely complex systems don’t melt down more than they do. Perhaps that’s changing (for the worse), but that they don’t is an ongoing tribute to the thankless work that Clearfield (a Greenwood neighbor) and Tilcsik (a Toronto professor) celebrate in their first book. Their mix of anecdote …
A different book about the art and science of flavor might be called “How We Taste,” but Becky Selengut, local chef and (you can tell) beloved cooking instructor, emphasizes the “to” in her title. Taste may be individual (and she’s fully aware there are many kinds of palates), but she wants to show you, in …
