Michael Schaub
Michael Schaub is a writer, book critic and regular contributor to NPR Books. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Portland Mercury and The Austin Chronicle, among other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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Keefe recognizes that we're all unreliable narrators of our own lives, and writes about his subjects with a keen sense of understanding. -
It's a testament to Hilary Mantel's brilliance as an author that even though the moments in these stories are subtle, the book somehow feels epic in its own way.
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It would have been easy for the famous journalist to fall into the nostalgia trap with his memoir, which chronicles his earliest years in the newspaper business. Happily, he doesn't.
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Jaime Cortez's debut collection, Gordo, is set in and around the same dusty California town that inspired John Steinbeck. It's a lovely portrait of a time and place that still manages to be universal.
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Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing for the top court still sticks in the minds of those all along the political spectrum; it's the subject of several books, including a new one by Jackie Calmes.
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Colson Whitehead's harrowing new novel is based on a true story about a brutally abusive reform school in Florida where the grounds were pocked with the unmarked graves of the boys who died there.
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Gifted writers Dan Abrams and David Fisher, who previously brought us Lincoln's Last Trial, are clearly fascinated by how Teddy Roosevelt's court case played out — bringing an enthusiasm to readers.
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Like David McCullough's other books, this one succeeds because of the author's strength as a storyteller; it reads like a novel and is packed with information drawn from painstaking research.
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Philippe Besson's novel — ably translated from the French by Molly Ringwald — chronicles a painful teenaged heartbreak, followed by grown-up ennui. It's a well-worn but very well-told tale.
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Journalist Charles Lane's account is endlessly gripping — and he does an excellent job of placing the operation in historical context, chronicling racism and resentment in the South post-Civil War.
