wahistorian's Reviews (506)

I cannot say enough about Chute's work: its scholarship, its humor, its contextualization of Shakespeare's life and work. There are memorable insights in every chapter, particularly about the audiences for which the playwright worked. "Elizabethan London was the home of the short-cut, with each of its inhabitants wanting to know as much as possible as quick as he could," she writes, in explanation of why so many gravitated to cities in the late 1500s; Shakespeare shared this ambition with those who paid to see his plays (64). Chute emphasizes that Shakespeare's ear for language may have been a natural-born gift, but his plays were the result of hard work and art. Don't miss the Appendix explaining the publication of the First Folio as his friends' and colleagues' most important memorial to Shakespeare.

About 2/3 of the time I hardly knew what Bloom was talking about, but the rest was delightful. He does this bawdy, gentle friend of a prince--and then a king--justice in this tribute to loyalty, amity, and the rejections of history.

If you want to understand immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border, read this book. Urrea traces the trip of the Wellton 26 (or, ultimately, the Yuma 14) from their homes in Veracruz through to their torturous trek through the Arizona desert. This is an incredibly compassionate and empathetic piece writing, with enough blame *and* understanding to go around for the immigrants, the coyotes who guided--and then abandoned--them, and the Border Patrol ("La Piche Migra").

Not one of Christie's best, in terms of building suspense, but what a twist at the end! Really more of a meditation on the essential character of people and how it expresses itself.

An obsessively researched survey of the lives and work of the members of the "Golden Age" of British detective fiction: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, G. K. Chesterton, and so many others. So many names and so many book titles! Yet still I came away with a delightful sense of what animated these authors--puzzles, mostly, and the need to set right in writing what could not be made whole in reality. It's easy to forget these prolific writers were human beings, and I appreciated the insights into their full lives as human beings.

How refreshing, a literary thriller in which the detective is *not* center stage! The fog in Allingham's London is virtually its own character, inserting itself into the story in ways that turn the plot and shape the mood. Allingham's real skill is creating a fully realized world in which no one is a literary stereotype and thus the reader cannot predict at any given moment who will do what next. I loved this book unexpectedly.

"She hadn't written about others' adventures, but had lived her own, which gave way to ours. She and all those millions of immigrants--your family included--who had come to make their lives and the lives of their children better." Stapinski's incredible detective work, against all odds, uncovers the real story of her great-great-great-grandmother, Vita Galitelli, rumored to have come to the U.S. after a murder.

Allingham offers up your classic 1933 puzzle mystery in which detective Albert Campion and his odd group of compatriots work to secure the newly strategic port of Averna for Britain by solving a three-part puzzle before the diabolical Savarnake, a villain of unknown nationality. The puzzle solving takes place in a small Suffolk village where Amanda Pontisbright--eventually to be Amanda Campion--and her family seem to be the heirs to Averna, but have yet to prove title. The book is rife with themes suggested by the events of 1933: Campion appears to be working for the government somehow, and the urgency to secure Averna port and oil resources reflects the coming war with Germany. But mostly it's a fun puzzle mystery with mistaken identities, a spooky mill, and steampunk technologies.

Several years before Jack the Ripper began preying on London women, a serial killer—perhaps the first in the U.S.—terrorized Austin, TX. Between 1885 and 1887 this so-called Midnight Assassin slaughtered 14 women, breaking into their bedrooms soundlessly and getting out before anyone knew what was happening. Skip Hollandsworth does an excellent job of contextualizing the murders and the city’s response, in a time before blood typing, fingerprinting, and other investigative techniques. Although Hollandsworth had no hope of solving the crimes, his obsessive study resulted in a fascinating book.