Critical Notes

Monday Roundup: Allen Guelzo, Nathaniel Philbrick, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and more

By Eric Liebetrau

At the Boston Globe, Jan Gardner looks at pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton's memoir.

Also at the Globe, Julia M. Klein reviews M.E. Thomas' Confessions of a Sociopath. In the Chicago Tribune, Klein examines a “vivid account of the first battles of the American Revolution,” Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill.

Michael Gorra on the Civil War’s turning point, as reflected by The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It and Allen Guelzo's Gettsyburg.

More on LBJ from 2012 NBCC Biography winner Robert Caro.

NBCC board member Rigoberto González on three debut poets.

For NPR, Maureen Corrigan reviews Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, “a novel about immigration that transcends genre.” Corrigan also reviews Kristine Barnett's The Spark for the Washington Post.

Marjorie Heins has been honored with the Hugh F. Hefner First Amendment Award for her book, Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge.

For the Christian Science Monitor, Rayyan Al-Shawaf reviews Rupert Shortt's necessary, timely, and informative Christianphobia: A Faith Under Attack. Al-Shawaf also takes on Khaled Hosseini's eagerly anticipated third novel, And the Mountains Echoed.

In the Wall Street Journal, Carl Rollyson reviews the latest biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by British philosopher Ray Monk.

Love is Power, Or Something Like That, A. Igoni Barrett's collection of short stories, reviewed in the Boston Globe by Jan Gardner.