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Book Review

Book Reviews

4/3/2019

‘American Dialogue: The Founders and Us’

By Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf Publishing Group
Oct. 16, 2018
Hardcover $27.95
304 Pages

In “American Dialogue,” Joseph Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, has taken some of the most vexing issues of the current political scene and related them back to the Founding Fathers. He reflects on Thomas Jefferson and race, John Adams and economic inequality, James Madison and the law, and George Washington on foreign policy.

Ellis discusses Jefferson’s early anti-slavery comments and his stance that slaves did not have a place in a white society, and he relates it to the difficulty we have dealing with racism today. He talks of Madison’s role in creating the Constitution and current “originalist” interpretation of the document. In each instance, he is promoting a conversation between the Founding Fathers’ positions as they relate to their time in history and the current political realities.

From the author of several histories of the Founding Fathers and their era, this is a thought provoking discussion of some of our most important issues of this day. — Review by Harriet Leitch

‘Lights All Night Long’

By Lydia Fitzpatrick
Penguin Press
April 2, 2019
Hardcover $27
352 Pages

“Lights All Night Long” is an un-put-down-able debut novel by Lydia Fitzpatrick.

The story opens with Ilya arriving in Louisiana as part of an exchange program. Ilya has been preparing for this for many years, but his mind is preoccupied with the fate of his older brother Vladimir. Before leaving for America, Vladimir was arrested in association with a string of murders. Ilya believes his brother to be innocent.

Ilya spends his free time in America trying to prove his brother’s innocence by recreating the timeline leading up to the murders. The reader watches the rise of Ilya to wunderkind and the fall of Vladimir to drug-addicted dropout.

If you loved “Where the Crawdads Sing,” give “Lights All Night Long” a shot.
Review by Hunter

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