http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/ Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:44 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ en hourly 1 http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.php#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:44 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.php The world said goodbye to Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in March, but the towering man of letters survives through works such as his classic novel Things Fall Apart and the many writers he inspired. One of those, Achebe’s 35-year-old compatriot Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, reminds us just how worthy an http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-ldquoact-of-congress-by-robert-g-kaiser.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-ldquoact-of-congress-by-robert-g-kaiser.php#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 09:50:41 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-ldquoact-of-congress-by-robert-g-kaiser.php Washington Post associate editor and senior correspondent Robert G. Kaiser was granted rare access to write Act of Congress: How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t, his illuminating book about the creation of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act. Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank let Kaiser talk http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/after-the-fall-the-posts-neil-irwin-on-the-financial-crisis.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/after-the-fall-the-posts-neil-irwin-on-the-financial-crisis.php#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:30:35 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/after-the-fall-the-posts-neil-irwin-on-the-financial-crisis.php Neil Irwin, a Washington Post economics columnist, covered the Fed and Treasury Department through the worst of the recent financial crisis. His reporting, supplemented by trips around the world to interview central bankers, has grown into a fascinating portrait of the hidden world of governments’ central banks. The Alchemists http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/inside-the-south-american-heart-marie-aranas-bolivar-american-liberator.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/inside-the-south-american-heart-marie-aranas-bolivar-american-liberator.php#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:40:02 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/inside-the-south-american-heart-marie-aranas-bolivar-american-liberator.php Marie Arana’s new book, Bolívar: American Liberator, is the first popular biography in English about Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar. Known as the Great Liberator and often compared to George Washington, Bolívar was a larger-than-life figure who liberated six South American countries from Spanish rule. The Peruvian-born Arana—a former Washington http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/book-review-lean-in-women-work-and-the-will-to-lead-by-sheryl-sandberg.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/book-review-lean-in-women-work-and-the-will-to-lead-by-sheryl-sandberg.php#comments Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:45:56 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/currentaffairs/book-review-lean-in-women-work-and-the-will-to-lead-by-sheryl-sandberg.php In 2011, DC native and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg delivered a rousing commencement address at Barnard that challenged the all-female graduates to close the professional leadership gap between men and women. “So go home tonight and ask yourselves: What would I do if I weren’t afraid?” she http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-secretary-a-journey-with-hillary-clinton-from-beirut-to-the-heart-of-american-power.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-secretary-a-journey-with-hillary-clinton-from-beirut-to-the-heart-of-american-power.php#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:45:57 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-secretary-a-journey-with-hillary-clinton-from-beirut-to-the-heart-of-american-power.php Ever wondered what life is like for a globetrotting reporter covering one of the most dynamic women in the world? Check out BBC State Department correspondent Kim Ghattas’s The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power. Ghattas, who grew up amid the http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-out-of-order-stories-from-the-history-of-the-supreme-court-by-sandra-day-oconnor.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-out-of-order-stories-from-the-history-of-the-supreme-court-by-sandra-day-oconnor.php#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 09:55:28 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-out-of-order-stories-from-the-history-of-the-supreme-court-by-sandra-day-oconnor.php In Out of Order: Stories From the History of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor quotes Joseph Story, who served on the court from 1812 to 1845 and, in an interview, pegged then chief justice John Marshall as a bit of a tippler: “We are great ascetics, and even http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-supernatural-strategies-for-making-a-rock-n-roll-group-by-ian-svenonius.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-supernatural-strategies-for-making-a-rock-n-roll-group-by-ian-svenonius.php#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:55:29 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-supernatural-strategies-for-making-a-rock-n-roll-group-by-ian-svenonius.php As its title indicates, prolific DC underground rocker Ian Svenonius’s arch new book, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ’n’ Roll Group, is “an indispensable guide for anyone attempting to create a rock ’n’ roll group.” With help from late rock gods such as Buddy Holly and Jimi Hendrix, who http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-mrs-lincolns-dressmaker-by-jennifer-chiaverini.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-mrs-lincolns-dressmaker-by-jennifer-chiaverini.php#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:45:23 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-mrs-lincolns-dressmaker-by-jennifer-chiaverini.php An example of what Jennifer Chiaverini does so well in her enlightening new historical novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, occurs late in the book, when a newly widowed Mary Todd Lincoln shares a letter of condolence from Queen Victoria with her dressmaker, a former slave named Elizabeth Keckley. Mrs. Lincoln feels http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-my-beloved-world-by-sonia-sotomayor.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-my-beloved-world-by-sonia-sotomayor.php#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:35:50 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/autobiographymemoir/book-review-my-beloved-world-by-sonia-sotomayor.php In her new memoir, My Beloved World, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor says she “ventured to write more intimately about my personal life than is customary for a member of the Supreme Court.”With buoyant humor and thoughtful candor, she recounts her rise from a crime-infested neighborhood in the South Bronx http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-the-last-runaway-by-tracy-chevalier.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-the-last-runaway-by-tracy-chevalier.php#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:45:36 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-the-last-runaway-by-tracy-chevalier.php If your idea of a page turner includes millinery, quilting, and Quaker life, Tracy Chevalier’s new novel, The Last Runaway, might have you panting from page one. For others, it’s going to take a bit longer. But hang in there—the book is worth it. Set in antebellum Ohio, the story http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-entertainer-by-margaret-talbot.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-entertainer-by-margaret-talbot.php#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:05:05 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-entertainer-by-margaret-talbot.php It’s hard to recall Lyle Talbot’s face. Reading his daughter Margaret’s story-packed book, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father’s Twentieth Century, my mental picture of him kept fading despite the photos: the itinerant thespian in the 1920s, the screen actor scowling at Spencer Tracy, the jovial regular on The http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-american-lady-the-life-of-susan-mary-alsops-by-caroline-de-margerie.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-american-lady-the-life-of-susan-mary-alsops-by-caroline-de-margerie.php#comments Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:35:40 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-american-lady-the-life-of-susan-mary-alsops-by-caroline-de-margerie.php Henry James taught us, in books like Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady, that bold American women should stay away from the Continent. But Caroline de Margerie’s compact, entertaining American Lady: The Life of Susan Mary Alsop is a reminder that there’s at least one exception. Alsop certainly http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-war-stories-by-elisabeth-doyle.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-war-stories-by-elisabeth-doyle.php#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:50:25 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/book-review-war-stories-by-elisabeth-doyle.php As its title implies, Washington attorney Elisabeth Doyle’s promising short-fiction debut, War Stories, often deals with the domestic fallout from American military conflicts. We asked her to explain why: “The journey to War Stories began in 2001 when I traveled to Vietnam for the first time, at the invitation of http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-story-of-aint-by-david-skinner.php http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-story-of-aint-by-david-skinner.php#comments Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:55:08 -0500 Alison Kitchens http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/biographyhistory/book-review-the-story-of-aint-by-david-skinner.php David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published tells how, in 1961, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary broke from the 1934 edition by describing the way people actually spoke. Skinner, former editor of the Weekly Standard, unearths such gems as a