Saturday, July 5th   Massacre River by Rene Philoctete

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A Review by Chris Faatz At once magical and grotesque, Rene Philoctete's amazing novel captures in a unforgettable manner a particularly dire moment of Haitian history: the 1937 massacres of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic. Massacre River is a monument of magical realism, a cascade of images and bizarre incongruities that nevertheless tell an irresistible story, complete with sympathetic (and unsympathetic) characters and a chilling moral. It's the story of Dominican worker and union activist Pedro Brito and his young Haitian wife, Adele. Set in the Dominican town of Elias Pina, and in the border region between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Massacre River follows their tale as it unfolds over the course of the massacre, from the appearance of a strange, ill-omened, birdlike thing in the sky over Elias Pina through their frenzied attempts to reunite in the face of the murderous chaos that stands between them. The book meanders through a slew of fascinating detours, examining the roots of...   Read the entire review More reviews from Powells.com

American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent Nerds Rule A Review by A. J. Jacobs When I was assigned this review, the editor wrote me a note: "I hope you don't take offense at this, but your name sprang to mind as a reviewer for a book on nerds." I probably qualify as a nerd because, among other things, I wrote a book about reading the encyclopedia -- an activity that's up there on the dorkiness scale with speaking Elvish over ham radio. But take offense? Not at all. Perhaps in high schools where quarterbacks still sit atop the social hierarchy, the word "nerd" continues to damage egos. But in adulthood, it's lost much of its sting. In fact, we live in a golden...   Read the entire review More reviews from Washington Post Book World				Happiness: A Revolution in Economics (Munich Lectures in Economics) by Bruno S. Frey Hedonic Man -- The new economics and the pursuit of happiness. A Review by Alan Wolfe I. When I first began hearing about what Bruno S. Frey, professor of economics at the University of Zurich, calls the "revolution" in his discipline, my reaction was one of delight. As far as I was concerned, it could not happen fast enough. Neoclassical economists had insisted upon the primacy of self- interest only in order to model human behavior, but the way rational choice theory developed (at the University of Chicago in particular) suggested that self-interest was not just a fact for these thinkers, but also an ideal: not just how people do act but also how they should act. Their...   Read the entire review More reviews from The New Republic Online
Life Studies and for the Union Dead (FSG Classics) by Robert Lowell Reconsiderations: "Life Studies" A Review by Adam Kirsh Even before Robert Lowell published Life Studies, his masterpiece, in 1959, he was widely regarded as the best American poet of his generation. But for most of the 1950s he was also completely blocked, managing to write, as he later recalled, just "five messy poems in five years." The problem was not that Lowell had failed to master his chosen style -- the symbol-studded, ambiguity-laden, highly artificial style of American modernism, as he had learned it from poets such as Allen Tate, his first literary mentor. On the contrary, Lowell had mastered that style so completely that he had...   Read the entire review More reviews from New York Sun				Get to Work: And Get a Life, Before It's Too Late by Linda R. Hirshman I Choose My Choice! A Review by Sandra Tsing Loh As you may have heard, some 50 years after Betty Friedan sprang us from domestic jail, we women "seem to have made a mess of it. What do we want? Not to be men (wrong again, Freud!), at least not businessmen -- although slacker men, sans futon and bong, might appeal. In these post-Lisa-Belkin-New-York-Times-Magazine-"Opt-Out" years, we've now learned the worst: even female Harvard graduates are fleeing high-powered careers for a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart Living. Not only does the Problem Have a Name, it has its own line of Fiestaware! And what are our fallen M.B.A. sisters of Crimson...   Read the entire review More reviews from The Atlantic Monthly
Sea Change: Poems by Jorie Graham A Powerful, Strong Torrent A Review by Helen Vendler You have/no rightful way//to live. This is the apprehension hovering behind Jorie Graham's new volume of poems, Sea Change. The apprehension springs in part from restless guilt concerning the ongoing American war, undertaken in our name by an elected president and an elected Congress. Any writer must wonder what to say when facing so many lives extirpated or damaged by our preemptive strike, so many conscienceless acts reported day by day. Every poet knows the impossibility of writing public rhetoric as such without personal imagination, but how is one to imagine oneself actively into a...   Read the entire review More reviews from New York Review of Books				Tonoharu: Part One by Lars Martinson Isolation Abroad A Review by Donald Lemke As a recipient of the prestigious Xeric Award in 2007, Tonorahu: Part One carries higher expectations than most debut graphic novels. Instead of overcompensating for this additional scrutiny, however, creator Lars Martinson delivers a thoughtfully restrained mixture of unembellished prose and sophisticated illustrations. Although published by his own newly created company, the first volume of Martinson's planned four-part series shows little evidence of its self-publishing roots. From the beautifully designed dust jacket to the patterned details on the endpapers, the hardback nears the...   Read the entire review More reviews from Rain Taxi