Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "The End of Your Life Book Club" by Will Schwalbe and "Waging Heavy Peace" by Neil Young.  

"The End of Your Life Book Club" by Will Schwalbe

Will Schwalbe received a shock when his vibrant, well traveled mother was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer at age 73 in 2007. Resigning from his post as editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, Schwalbe spent the next two years accompanying his mother, Mary Anne Schwalbe, to doctor visits and chemotherapy sessions where the passionate readers formed a two-person book club. “Books provided an avenue for the author and his mother to explore important topics that made them uneasy,” Kirkus Reviews notes before calling the memoir “a heartfelt tribute.” In her review for The Columbus Dispatch, Margaret Quamme says, “His story is a warm reminder why we read and what our reading says about us and the ways we connect with others.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly is similarly moved, raving, “With a refreshing forthrightness, and an excellent list of books included, this is an astonishing, pertinent, and wonderfully welcome work.”

"Waging Heavy Peace" by Neil Young

The first thing to note about Neil Young’s memoir is that he wrote it himself, a necessary point of fact in this age of the celebrity ghostwriter. At 66, Young is still a much worshipped and imitated folk singer with a back catalogue that is referenced and riffed with astonishing regularity by modern musicians. Singer-songwriter John Welsey Harding, writing as Wesley Stace in The Wall Street Journal, calls "Waging Heavy Peace" "…terrific: modest, honest, funny, and frequently moving." In a favorable review in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dan DeLuca calls it “its own kind of book,” later underscoring his point with, “It's a shaggy-dog tale told with childlike wonder by a protean creator learning a new craft as he goes. At times, Young uses more exclamation points than a texting teenager, and he'll inform you that his word count is up to 90,000, or that he has only had to rewrite one paragraph so far.” Simon Vozick-Levinson, writing for RollingStone.com, is also taken by Young’s shambolic writing approach, noting that the memoir “often reads less like a traditional autobiography than a lively blog -- full of casual asides, unpredictable tangents and open-ended questions…” and forgives some “free-associative riffing” before ultimately praising the book for showing “…that Young is still in full possession of that stubborn, brilliant, one-of-a-kind instrument,” his mind.

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age" by Janet Wallach and "The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down" by Andrew McCarthy.

"The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age" by Janet Wallach

With a steely determination forged by an emotionally unsatisfactory upbringing, Hetty Green became a star of America’s Gilded Age by amassing a fortune estimated at $100 million at time when economic strife was gripping the country. A stunning example of early twentieth century female empowerment, Green’s life has always been an awe-inspiring and entertaining nugget for cultural historians, and on this score Janet Wallach’s new biography has appealed to the critics, with Publishers Weekly noting that “Wallach’s enjoyable account encourages admiration for Green’s cheekiness in face of straitlaced bankers” and notes that “the author successfully portrays a compelling woman.” Sherryl Connelly of New York Daily News says, “It is always fun to return to the story of Green,” and, after recounting Green’s notoriety for frugality and her a stern attitude when it came to her money, acknowledges that “Wallach presents Green’s charitable self, a woman who could be wise and witty, warm as well. And generous, too.” Kirkus Reviews is similarly pleased with this new account, concluding its review with, “The dearth of diaries and personal correspondence available to the author has not prevented her from writing a thoroughly enjoyable biography.”

Bio-Metric: 4/5

"The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down" by Andrew McCarthy

Actor and travel writer Andrew McCarthy has had an incredible trajectory from Brat Packer (St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink) to backpacker (he's now an award-winning writer for National Geographic, Afar, and others). In the midst of an epic interior struggle with whether he wants to enter a second marriage with his longtime girlfriend, McCarthy charts a course of self-discovery through the forests of Coast Rica and along the Amazon River, leaving critics decidedly split on this personal retelling of events, which has been compared to Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love. Cheryl Strayed, writing in The New York Times, says, “This isn’t a brash, boorish, 'don’t go loving me babe because the road’s my middle name' memoir of masculine bravado. It’s a good book about a good man who’s trying good and hard to figure himself out.” Her sympathies are echoed by a widely republished BlogCritics.org review, which notes that “As the book progresses, he's no longer quite the loner that he used to be. Readers will enjoy taking this journey with McCarthy, and may be tempted to plan some soul-searching travel of their own.”  Slate.com’s Jessica Pressler, though giving McCarthy points for his “observational skills”, is peeved with his subject matter, declaring, “…a story about a man-child who feels trapped and underappreciated by his family and just wants five minutes to himself is joyless and familiar, like watching a Judd Apatow movie with all of the poop jokes cut out.”

Bio-Metric: 3/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High" by Tony Danza and "Vagina: A New Biography" by Naomi Wolf.

"Vagina: A New Biography" by Naomi Wolf

In her twentieth year as a feminist writer and provocateur, Naomi Wolf places her vagina front and center in a memoir that seeks to make the connection between neuroscience and female sexual gratification -- a juxtaposition that the Los Angeles Times’ Carolyn Kellogg finds “shaky.” “There are leaps of logic in this deeply flawed book,” Kellogg goes on to write, “correlation is mistaken for causation, and she relies heavily on anecdotes instead of research. Most troubling, she presents her theories and goes looking for confirmation. Rather than investigating a question, she's trying to prove a point.” The Economist files similar charges against Vagina, calling the memoir, “entertaining and appalling in turns, with language that tends towards the outlandish,” and indicts Wolf for having a “habit of stretching concepts past their breaking point.” Susan Pelle is no less damning in her review in the Houston Chronicle where she decries Wolf’s exclusion of the political and cultural circumstances of women of color, disabled women, and transsexual and transgendered individuals, and is particularly troubled by the author’s analysis of the “vagina-brain” connection that “places self-actualized vaginas in direct opposition to the brutal and systematic rape of girls and women in war-torn Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Pelle forcefully concludes, “Wolf is lucky (and privileged) enough to have surpassed the shame and pain surrounding her vagina. Yet, the implication of her research is if women cannot overcome such traumas, then they are doomed to live an incomplete life...Unfortunately, Wolf tells the story of one vagina, not all vaginas.” Bio-metric: 2/5

"I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I've Ever Had" by Tony Danza

That Tony Danza -- the award-winning actor of Taxi and Who’s the Boss? fame -- wrote a memoir about teaching is the real hook of I’d Like to Apologize. Initially conceived as a documentary for cable network A&E, Danza’s foray into teaching English to tenth graders at Philadelphia’s troubled Northeast High has morphed into a memoir that Publishers’ Weekly calls “endearing.” Kirkus’ Review similarly praises Danza ability to transform what initially seems like urban adolescent stereotypes “into fully realized characters due to [his] verve and care in discussing them,” though the review goes on to acknowledge that Danza’s “writing is slick and occasionally mawkish.” The Washington Post’s Colin Fleming, writing admiringly of the challenges posed to Danza’s affability during his teaching stint, notes that “Anyone expecting Danza to mug his way through the year is bound to come away shaken by the man’s sincerity. And he has a knack for turning a phrase.” Bio-metric: 3/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder" and "Mortality by Christopher Hitchens."

"On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson" by William Souder

It is with little argument that Rachel Carson can be crowned the godmother of environmentalism. Author of the seminal work "Silent Spring" (1962), which spurred on changes in U.S. environmental polices with its warning bells about the ecological consequences of pesticides, Carson was a marine biologist and staunch conservationist in an era when being an unmarried and outspoken woman was beyond radical. In this new examination of Carson’s life, Pulitzer Prize nominee William Souder “portrays Carson as a woman passionate in friendship, poetic and innovative in her books about the sea, gentle but ambitious, assiduously keeping tabs on her publisher’s promotion of her work,” writes Publishers Weekly. Kirkus’ Reviews praises Souder’s portrayal of Carson’s struggle to live a quiet life in the face of celebrity and opposition by the chemical industry after the publication of Silent Spring, noting that he “writes beautifully about this dichotomy, revealing intimate details about the writing process and her relationships with editors, fans, family and her beloved companion Dorothy Freeman, with whom she spent some of her happiest moments while on the Maine coastline.” Elyssa East, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, found Souder’s discussion of Carson’s detractors “heavy-handed,” but overall believed that, “In the hands of a lesser biographer, Carson's quiet life of hard work and dogged determination could make for a dull read, but Souder…tells a suspenseful tale of the literary life, pending environmental devastation and Carson's struggle with breast cancer.”

Bio-Metric: 4/5

"Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens

Noted as the quintessential contrarian, the late essayist Christopher Hitchens was known for his acerbic, crystalline way of making a point. The well-read, eloquent, prickly, but sometimes endearing Hitchens was lauded for underscoring his polemics with terrifying, defining experiences (in 2008, he underwent waterboarding) and loathed for his takedowns of sacred icons, including God, the Pope, and Mother Teresa. In "Mortality," a slender volume that gathers his final essays first published in Vanity Fair magazine and a clutch of final thoughts as he traversed the dark landscape of dying from esophageal cancer, Hitchens gives his fans and detractors a postscript of a life lived fully. “The book’s power lies in its simplicity, in its straightforward, intelligent documenting, its startling refusal of showiness or melodrama or grandeur,” writes Katie Roiphe for Slate.com. “This is highly unusual in a death memoir… In Mortality, Hitchens is using himself as a way of writing about death; he is not using death as a way of writing about himself.” Hitchens’ lack of self-pity is deeply admired by Henry Allen, who says in The Wall Street Journal, “Mortality" is poignant, but the poignancy is ours, not his: "Irony is my business and I just can't see any ironies here." Death is no china shop, so he could not play the bull except by attacking the people who have written to deny death or offer hope that death can be evaded or made to seem more meaningful.” This stoicism is poked somewhat by David L. Ulin, who recognizes Hitchens for the singular figure he cut as an essayist, but who also found "Mortality" to be less than personable. “Again and again, Hitchens steers away from feeling and toward argument, whether he is discussing atheism…or the rigors of medical treatment, which he equates with torture in both a physical and a psychological sense,” Ulin writes in the Los Angeles Times, continuing, “Sure, Hitchens writes about his pain, just as he addresses the mix of anticipation and frustration that comes from being at the edge of cancer research. Still, when it comes to his feelings of loss or longing, he remains almost deliberately disengaged.”

Bio-metric: 4/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at “Barack Obama: The Story” by David Maraniss and “Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace” by D. T. Max.

“Barack Obama: The Story” by David Maraniss

The latest in a slew of Obama biographies (following David Remnick’s “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” and Janny Scott’s “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” among others) attempting to uncover the source of the President’s political ambition, David Maraniss’s 641-page tome, “Barack Obama: The Story” arrived on bookshelves with some handwringing from the White House. That fear, which stems from Maraniss’s careful disassembling of Obama’s memoir, “Dreams from My Father” within “The Story,” is not completely unfounded, but as Darryl Pinckney observes in The New York Review of Books, its impact is rather muted. “Maraniss’s competition with Dreams from My Father makes him a prisoner of his material,” Pinckney writes, “resulting in a sort of biographer’s Stockholm Syndrome about those he has interviewed. Often you get the feeling that because they gave him so much of their time, their trust, and that he bonded with them in some way, he bestows on them the glory of his narrative sun.”

Jonathan Karl, writing in the Wall Street Journal, sees an obscure portrait of Obama in Maraniss’s biography, noting that, “The recurring theme that runs throughout ‘Obama: The Story’ is just how unlikely is was that someone with Mr. Obama's exotic and tangled family history -- whatever his race -- would end up in the Oval Office.” Kevin Harnett of the Christian Science Monitor is similarly fascinated by Obama’s opaque ambition as presented in “The Story,” admitting that it is unclear why the President pursued power or what exactly he would do with it, but concludes, “Maraniss ably outlines the mystery of Obama’s character, even if he’s not able to solve it.”
Bio-Metric: 3/5

“Every Love Story is a Ghost Story” By D. T. Max

The first major biography of the beloved author of the seminal novel "Infinite Jest," D. T. Max’s “Every Love Story is a Ghost Story” attempts to chart David Foster Wallace’s epic and public struggle with depression and addiction, culminating in his suicide at age forty-six in 2008. Though Max wrote his biography with cooperation from Wallace’s friends and family, Publisher’s Weekly Gabe Habash finds the effort disappointing, noting that, “The facts are all there, but Max…often seems in a hurry to report them, rarely stopping to explore Wallace’s struggles with his social identity or his creative evolution.” Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times is much more generous, declaring, “What Mr. Max’s book does do -- and does powerfully -- is provide an emotionally detailed portrait of the artist as a young man: conflicted, self-conscious and deeply thoughtful, like so many of his characters a seeker after an understanding of his own place in the world and a Melvillian ‘isolato,’ yearning for connection yet stymied by the whirring of his own brain and the discontinuities of an America reeling from information overload.” Kirkus’ Review is similarly impressed, simply calling Max’s work, “A stellar biography of a complicated subject: Max's portrait skillfully unites Wallace’s external and internal lives.”
Bio-Metric: 4/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life that Follows" by Brian Castner and "James Joyce: A New Biography" by Gordon Bowker.

“The Long Walk” by Brian Castner

Brian Castner served two tours of duty in Iraq as Commander of two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units before returning to the U.S. emotionally and mentally fractured. Self-described as “Crazy” with a capital C, Castner says on his blog that his raw, unflinching debut is “the intertwined story of two journeys: an outward struggle of surviving the urban combat of modern war in order to return home at all costs, and the inward journey to find the new person that emerges after undertaking such a task.”

“He gives equal, if not more, weight to the time and effort that goes into readjusting to his family life, and his straightforward, unself-conscious writing paints an absorbing picture of war in the twenty-first century -- the first century in which post-traumatic stress disorder has been both diagnosed and treated as a medical condition,” writes Chloe Fox for The New Yorker. Katie Bacon of The Boston Globe echoes this somewhat, noting that “the book jumps and loops around incessantly, mirroring Castner’s disordered mind.” Though Bacon thought this disjointedness took some power away from the overall narrative, she later writes, “Still, this is an important book to read for anyone who wants to get some sense of the long-term human toll of the Iraq war.” Kirkus’ Review concludes that The Long Walk is “scarifying stuff without any mawkishness or dumb machismo.”
Bio-Metric: 4/5

“James Joyce” by Gordon Bowker

James Joyce’s remarkable talent as a writer was influenced greatly by the machinations of his personal life -- a well from which he drew early and often in becoming a giant of twentieth century literature. Bowker’s new assessment of the author of classics "Finnegan’s Wake" and "Ulysses" has inevitably been compared to Richard Ellmann’s definitive 1959 biography, "James Joyce," but Bowker, who has also written biographies of Malcolm Lowry and George Orwell, assertively steps out of the shadow of that earlier book to offer more insight into Joyce’s inner life.

“The distance between Joyce the man suffering and Joyce magisterial at his desk seems large and mysterious,” writes Colm Toibin in The New York Times. “The story of his life, told here with verve and pace, nonetheless remains a fascinating version of making it new under the most severe pressures.” The Economist notes that, “the first significant volume for more than 50 years since Richard Ellmann's version, is a masterly example of how to trace the life of a writer, particularly one as difficult as Joyce.”  Michael Dirda of The Washington Post agrees and credits Bowker with writing “clearly and forcefully” with a focus “almost strictly on Joyce the human being,” concluding that the new biography is “well worth reading, even if Joyce comes across as brilliant but exploitative, admirable as an artist but often mortifying as a man. It’s not always a pretty picture, but it seems like a true one.”
Bio-Metric: 5/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new memoirs being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation" by Rachel Cusk, and "My Life As a Mankiewicz: An Insider’s Journey through Hollywood" by Tom Mankiewicz. 

"Aftermath" by Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk has made quite a name for herself in England. Her fiction is top-notch, having won the Whitbread First Novel Award for "Saving Agnes" in 1993, and shines brightest when shedding light on domestic matters. Her imaginative insights cut deeply across family ties to expose the hidden realities behind everyday relationships. When it comes to nonfiction, however, she loses her audience. In "Aftermath," a memoir of divorce, Cusk polarizes her base with what's perceived as pretension and overwrought intellectualism.

"As a whole," writes Emma Gilbey Keller of The New York Times, "this book doesn't work." Her writing comes off as "self-involved," her papers riddled with "pretension," her tale too "tedious." Her "obvious love for" her children bless the book with "vibrant passages," but the "lack of detail" about her divorce is the book's "most glaring omission." Her cerebral slant is the subject of all "Aftermath" reviews. Liza Mundy of The San Francisco Chronicle asks the reader to accept Cusk's foundering marriage to make way for the "compelling" and "restlessly erudite portrait of post-marital strife." Yet Cusk "devastatingly emasculates her husband" in this "part puzzle and part disappointment" of a book, writes Emily Bazelon of Slate, who only takes solace in the final pages that end with a chapter of fiction - her "favorite part."
Bio-Metric: 2/5

"My Life As a Mankiewicz" by Tom Mankiewicz

Tom Mankiewicz came from an illustrious line of entertainment whizzes extraordinaire. His father won four Oscars in two years, having written and directed the classic film All About Eve. His uncle Herman Mankiewicz also won an Oscar for co-writing Citizen Kane. Without a Mankiewicz, there'd be no "rosebud." Tom, who bravely contributed to his memoir in the midst of pancreatic cancer that eventually took his life, followed in his family's footsteps. He wrote or co-wrote many of the James Bond films we quote today. The posthumous publication of Tom Mankiewicz's memoir is, by all reviewers' accounts, a trove of cinematic tales and celebrity gossip.

"Prime firsthand anecdotes fill this consistently readable and entertaining book," writes John DiLeo of The Washington Post. Martin Rubin of The Washington Times agrees, calling "My Life" something "bursting with good stories," suggesting he wouldn't mind reading Mankiewicz's stories for days on end: "This enormously entertaining memoir gives the reader the benefit of a superb raconteur’s vast store of anecdote and incident." The Wall Street Journal's Scott Eyman reiterates that "My Life" is "not a superficial book either, and it's invariably entertaining, if only because a gift for words runs in the family."
Bio-Metric: 4/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new biographies being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies" by Ben Macintyre and "Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child" by Bob Spitz.

"Double Cross" by Ben Macintyre

John le Carre mastered the genre. Ian Fleming made it cool. Alan Furst massaged some history into its narratives. With "Double Cross," Ben Macintyre has firmly cemented his position as the author who makes the spy thriller real.  A little primer: The Double Cross system was America's anti-espionage effort to flip German spies and convert them into double agents. Those double agents would feed their Nazi higher-ups all kinds of disinformation, ultimately misleading them towards defeat on D-Day. Macintyre takes this truth and wrings out all its eclectic characters and high-stakes moments, reaping a riveting saga of espionage and counter-intelligence.

"As in his earlier best-sellers about WWII-era spycraft, 'Agent Zigzag' and 'Operation Mincemeat,' Macintyre writes with novelistic flair," writes Thom Geier of Entertainment Weekly, and he "never loses sight of the main plot." John Wilwol of The San Francisco Chronicle agrees, calling Macintyre a "master storyteller." Wilwol continues: "Employing a wry wit and a keen eye for detail, he delivers an ultimately winning tale fraught with European intrigue and subtle wartime heroics." Part of Macintyre's success is his ability to be there to carry and convey the tale, but not disrupt it with too many opinions or asides. The Wall Street Journal makes note of his skillful touch: "He knows how to let the high drama unfold on its own," writes Jennifer Siegel, "Even though we know how D-Day turns out, it remains a thrilling tale."
Bio-Metric: 5/5

"Dearie" by Bob Spitz

In the garden of popular American personalities, Julia Child has grown to become one of the biggest, brightest and freshest crops of them all. Mixing a healthy dose of education and entertainment, Child fearlessly led aspiring cooks -- as well as us amateurs -- into the kitchen in the '70s and '80s by disarming us with her sassy personality, inspiring us with her casual confidence, and easing us with that Cheshire grin. Not to mention making it OK for us closeted cilantro haters to come out and speak our minds. It's no wonder, then, that one of the preeminent biographers of our times -- Bob Spitz -- has decided to capture the colossal icon's life in pen strokes for her 100th anniversary.

Though it's been difficult to see the forest through the trees of new Julia Child books being published to honor her birth, Colman Andrews of The Wall Street Journal calls Spitz's work "by far the most substantial new book on Child." Andrews continues by saying "Bob Spitz does a good job of capturing Child's irrepressible spirit," and he uses "the kind of language, slangy and salty, that Child would have enjoyed and might have used herself." Kirkus' Review concludes the book is "an engrossing biography of a woman worthy of iconic status," and Publisher's Weekly thinks Spitz has cooked up a masterpiece of biographical proportions: "Spitz reminds us that Child had always possessed a tremendous amount of excess energy with no outlet for expressing it" and his "delightful biography succeeds in being as big as its subject."
Bio-Metric: 5/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews in case you missed them. Below are the collected reviews of two new books being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at “Something Like the Gods: A Cultural History of the Athlete From Achilles to LeBron” by Stephen Amidon and "All We Know: Three Lives" by Lisa Cohen. 

 "Something Like The Gods" by Stephen Amidon

There are roughly 10,500 athletes currently competing in the 2012 London Summer Olympics. While each player specializes in differing areas of skill, grace, and form (you can't plop a fencer into a 25o-meter swimming relay), they still share one outsize commonality: the grand and mythical image of the revered Olympian. This supernatural similarity is what forms the basis of Stephen Amidon's biographical history of the Olympic athlete, which traces the lineage of modern-day competitors to ancient Greek heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, and reveals how not much has changed in our awe-filled perception of Olympic idols.

Nigel Spivey of The Wall Street Journal deducted a few points from Amidon's book, citing a scope he thought was stretched a little too thin. Those quibbles aside, Spivey still felt like he was left with speechless appreciation for the sporting life: "...the history of sport has become a sophisticated academic discipline. As Norman Mailer showed, it takes a writer of pugnacious bravura to tackle the specialists. With Stephen Amidon's survey that truth is reaffirmed." Calling it a "smartly written" and "thoroughly researched" book, T. Rees Shapiro of The Washington Post gives "Something Like The Gods" the highest possible marks. Meanwhile, Kirkus' Review calls it an "enlightening history" that "says as much about all of us as it does about athletes."
Bio-Metric: 4/5

"All We Know: Three Lives" by Lisa Cohen

Though the names Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland likely won't ring any bells, author Lisa Cohen  constructs a convincing biography that explains why they now should. Their vision is universally understood, their roles relived by successive generations of avante garde women. Cohen sets her sights on three turn-of-the-century women -- all lesbians -- who were metropolitan, modern and intent on pushing the envelopes of accepted norms. Woven together, the three characters are used as blueprints to build an understanding of early-twentieth century gender roles, modernity and class structure.

Kate Tuttle of The Boston Globe calls Cohen's work a "brilliant and gorgeously written book" that has "an undercurrent of deep sympathy and an acute eye for revealing details." Hilton Als of The New Yorker is overflowing with praise, calling it an "intensely humbling and troubling read" about "failure and fear of self-exposure, and how we accommodate our lives to suit the various shadows splashed by the sun of occasional triumph." Laura Jacobs of The Wall Street Journal agrees, noting that "All We Know" is a "superbly satisfying study of the nature of artfulness." She concludes by praising the book's timelessness: "Ms. Cohen allows us to look deeper into our definitions of failure, identity and modernity, while also reappraising the stature of artfulness as opposed to art."
Bio-Metric: 4.5/5

Unsure what new book to read next? Sit back: We read the book reviews so you don't have to. Below are the collected reviews of two new memoirs being discussed in leading journals and magazines. Today we look at "The Cost of Hope: A Memoir" by Amanda Bennett, and "A Daughter's Tale: The Memoir of Winston Churchill's Youngest Child" by Mary Soames

"The Cost of Hope" by Amanda Bennett

In modern society, the process of dying is at once an extremely personal voyage that also has very public implications. In "The Cost of Hope," Amanda Bennett dissects the death of her husband - who passed away seven years after being diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer - with a profound understanding of the personal and public ripple effects his absence left behind. Summoning the likes of Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates, Bennett's grief compelled her to plumb the depths of love she and her husband shared as a couple and as a family. But she alternates tools, at times using a stethoscope to explore the pulse of her relationship, then a magnifying glass to read the fine lines of the medical bills. Her memoir is balanced with a journalist's eye for details concerning the history of her husband's disease, as well as the exorbitant costs his healthcare demanded.

To Cathi Hanauer of The New York Times, "Hope" is "equal parts marriage confessional and skilled investigative report," and is most "graceful" when she "knits details of Foley’s illness...with those of the couple’s family life and her jobs."   Most reviewers conclude that the heart of the book is stronger than its brain. Suzanne Koven of The Boston Globe agrees that "Bennett has written a deeply felt memoir" that happens to be "wrapped in a rather half-hearted discourse on the economics of health care. Ignore the wrapper — and savor its rich contents." Finally, Laura Landro of The Wall Street Journal believes her memoir "illuminates the conundrum Americans face over the high cost of care—the fact that we will do almost anything to keep our loved ones alive because we can't bear to let them go." In the throes of family illness, Cost always takes the back seat to Care.
Bio-Metric: 4/5

"A Daughter's Tale" by Mary Soames

When you're the close relative of a global figure, it must be hard to escape their shadow. You're always a "brother," "daughter," or "father" of someone, so often defined by their accomplishments more than your own. Still, these are minor details. Mary Soames may be Winston Churchill's daughter, but she is also her own woman who served in the ranks and was admitted to some of the most important political conferences in the 20th century. Her new memoir "A Daughter's Tale" is an homage to the brilliant mind of her father, the revered Prime Minister of Britain and a craftsman of the free world. But her book is also a testament to her proud continuance of the Churchill name and the unique view with which she witnessed the most cataclysmic events in recent history.

Philip Ziegler of The Spectator calls "A Daughter's Tale" a "perceptive, funny, always totally honest" book that "provides an unequalled view of the corridors of power." Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post thinks Soames let the ending get away with her in the final pages, but still maintained its signature charm, of which something the Churchill's are never in short supply: "Unfortunately toward the end of the book she relies more than necessary on direct quotation from her rather flibberty-jibberty diaries, but youth does have its charms, and these extracts can be forgiven on that ground. On the whole 'A Daughter’s Tale' is charming in the best sense of the word, a fit capstone to what has been a remarkable life."
Bio-Metric: 4/5