Review by New York Times Review
ATTICUS FINCH: The Biography, by Joseph Crespino. (Basic Books, $27.) This biography of the much-loved fictional character from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" brings to life the inconsistencies of the South and of Lee's father, who was the model for the real Atticus. BEARSKIN, by James A. McLaughlin. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Terrible things are happening to black bears in this debut mystery set in western Virginia. And the humans facing off against the novel's ex-con hero, now charged with protecting a wilderness preserve, are just as terrible. THE WORLD AS IT IS: A Memoir of the Obama White House, by Ben Rhodes. (Random House, $30.) In this humane and amiable insider's account of the Obama years, Rhodes traces his intellectual evolution as a key adviser to the president. Starry-eyed at the beginning, he learns to temper his idealism, but in a crass political era, he impressively avoids becoming a cynic. TYRANT: Shakespeare on Politics, by Stephen Greenblatt. (Norton, $21.95.) The noted Shakespeare scholar finds parallels between our political world and that of the Elizabethans - and in his catalog of the plays' tyrannical characters, locates some very familiar contemporary types. THERE THERE, by Tommy Orange. (Knopf, $25.95.) Orange's devastatingly beautiful debut novel, about a group of characters converging on the San Francisco Bay Area for an event called the "Big Oakland Powwow," explores what it means to be an urban Native American. A VIEW OF THE EMPIRE AT SUNSET, by Caryl Phillips. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Set in England, France and the Caribbean, Phillips's fragmented novel uses the difficult, lonely life of the half-Welsh, half-West-Indian writer Jean Rhys (author of "Wide Sargasso Sea") to explore themes of alienation, colonialism and exile. THE MORALIST: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, by Patricia O'Toole. (Simon & Schuster, $35.) O'Toole focuses on the public deeds of a president who has become a source of almost endless controversy. She describes a politician deft at shifting his views to gain power and achieve important reforms. PURE HOLLYWOOD: And Other Stories, by Christine Schutt. (Grove, $23.) These expert stories by a Pulitzer finalist are awash in money, lush foliage and menace, in prose so offbeat it's revelatory. DRAWN TOGETHER, by Minh Le. Illustrated by Dan Santat. (Hyperion, $17.99; ages 4 to 8.) In this picture book, a boy and his grandpa, who doesn't speak English, sit glumly until they begin to draw a comic-book epic together, bridging the language and generational divide in a way that's at once touching and thrilling. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 8, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
Why would a nameless servant in Shakespeare's Lear a character speaking very few lines command sustained attention from a prominent authority on the Bard? Greenblatt focuses on the nameless servant killed by Regan in act III because that servant embodies an ordinary person's resistance to tyranny. And such tyranny fascinates Shakespeare as he depicts cruel despots such as Cornwall, Macbeth, Richard II, Leontes, and Coriolanus. With lucid economy, Greenblatt illuminates the twisted but surprisingly vulnerable psyches of Shakespeare's power-hungry tyrants and traces the horrid chain of offenses they commit against innocent individuals and against the body politic. Though he concedes that Shakespeare evinces little faith in the common people as a reliable check on tyrannical ambitions, Greenblatt gleans evidence that the nameless servant who dies opposing tyranny in Lear acts on impulses widely shared by others. Like Shakespeare himself who comments on Elizabethan politics only obliquely Greenblatt hints, in his analysis of Shakespeare's plays, at a critical perspective of urgent relevance in the world of twenty-first-century politics. Compelling literary history and analysis.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Greenblatt (The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve), a Harvard humanities professor, offers a canny parallel to contemporary political concerns in this survey of tyrannical figures in Shakespeare's works. Using the protagonists of Coriolanus, King Lear, Macbeth, and the Wars of the Roses plays, among others, Greenblatt convincingly and bracingly explores the circumstances that allow for the rise of autocratic rulers. His quotations furnish vivid examples of how bullying and intimidation stifle opposition-Richard III declares "I'll make a corpse of him that disobeys"-and of how public figures can get away with brazen lies-a rebel leader in Henry VI, Part 2 claims an aristocratic mother, though in truth "she was a midwife." Nor does he ignore the role of sex as a motivator for tyrants and the role of women in defying autocrats, using as respective examples the self-loathing, misogynistic Richard III's declaration that he was not "made to court an amorous looking glass" and Cordelia's refusal to flatter her father at the start of Lear. Though Greenblatt names no names from current events, the reader can fill in the blanks with any number of contemporary politicians. The chapters on Richard III are perhaps the most visceral and immediate, but the entire book is full of insight, both for lovers of literature and for students of history and politics. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the guise of Shakespearean analysis, Greenblatt (John Cogan Univ. Professor of the Humanities, Harvard Univ; Will in the World), prompted by the election of Donald Trump, draws thinly veiled analogies between some of Shakespeare's most despicable characters and America's president. The bully of Richard III, for example, succeeds because some people believe his lies, such as his birther conspiracy denying the legitimacy of Edward IV's sons and even Edward IV. Others ignore his evil or believe the state is sufficiently resilient to survive his reign. Still others, such as Lord Hastings and Buckingham, think they will benefit from his reign, only to be destroyed by him. Shakespeare recognized the fascination of the abomination. Anne Neville marries Richard even though he killed her husband and father-in-law. Other tyrants Greenblatt discusses include Macbeth, Jack Cade (Henry VI, Part 2), Coriolanus, and King Lear. Greenblatt's analogies sometimes feel strained, and his conclusion that ordinary citizens can restore decency seems overly optimistic and un-Shakespearean. VERDICT A timely book for general readers. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/17.]-Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A leading scholar invokes the Bard of Avon to investigate why anyone would "be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth."In this study of the power-hungry monarchs in the plays of Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greenblatt (Humanities/Harvard Univ.; The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, 2017, etc.) frequently points out why the great English playwright set his work in the vanished past: It was the only way to write a political play. No one could say a word against Queen Elizabeth and expect to live, but you could do it covertly by wrestling with modern issues from a distant perspective. Though under no such restrictions himself, Greenblatt, who has previously assessed Shakespeare as an editor and a biographer, takes this model to heart, using the plays to deliver his own barbed critique of the current occupant of the White House, who makes the job easy; the author doesn't even have to say his name. We glimpse him in the demagogue John Cade in 2 Henry VI, eager "to make England great again" by attacking the "educated elite." In Richard III, we see the swaggerer with a deep inferiority complex, compensating for his defects by "bullying those who possess the natural endowments he lacks." King Lear's "boundless desire to hear his praises sung" easily brings to mind a president surrounded by a Cabinet of flatterers. In The Winter Tale's King Leontes, we see the ruler destroyed by his own suspicions, constantly responding to the fake news in his head. "A tyrant does not need to traffic in facts or apply evidence," writes the author. "He expects his accusation to be enough." Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus come in for similar timely reappraisals.An incisive and instructive study of personality politics and the abuse of power--topical literary criticism with classical virtues.
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