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October 2022
Posted 10.03.22: "Fans of Melanie Kirkpatrick during her years on the Wall Street Journal will be delighted by her Lady Editor: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Making of the Modern American Woman. It's a pearl of a book in which one of our own era's leading newspaperwomen pays homage to Sarah Josepha Hale, who, Ms. Kirkpatrick reckons, was 'one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century' but is 'all but forgotten in ours.' No longer. Born in 1788, Hale was propelled by widowhood into the workforce at a time 'before women could go to college, work as public school teachers, practice medicine, or even manage their own money.' Hale nevertheless became a pioneering writer and editor. Editing two influential publications—the Ladies' Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book—she helped forge 19th-century American culture. When she became an editor, Hale sent four of her five children to live with relatives. Yet she proved that a woman could have it all. That adds up—for both Hale and her biographer—to a scoop."—John Bennett, The New York Sun
September 2022
Posted 09.23.22: “The book is, essentially, a love letter to the items in its subtitle: ‘Crime, detection, and the spirit of noir.'...The real originality of this book lies less in its critical comments than in its creativity. Lehman, who is also a poet, includes poems, his own and others', inspired by or imitating noir.... As if conversing with another aficionado, he compares favourite actors and moments, repeats favourite wisecracks and tries to recreate the pleasure of the initial experience. In his casual way he also sparks ideas.... Most readers will, like me, know fewer than half of the books and films discussed here, and will want to hunt down the ones that sound most interesting.... How often does a critical book actually make one want to read the books it discusses?”—Lois Potter in The Times Literary Supplement on The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir by David Lehman
June 2022
Posted 06.02.22: "On the evidence of Lehman's body of work, and never more so than in this collection, here is a guy who really knows how to live. In The Morning Line, he seems more than ever besotted with the world's abundance, sensory, cerebral, emotional.... Here is a book filled with as many experiences, reflections, observations, songs, poets, other people—past to present—poetic styles, and things, as a single poetry collection can hold."—Suzanne Lummis, Another Chicago Magazine
May 2022
Posted 05.06.22: “David Lehman's The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir surveys fiction, film, poetry and music. As one might expect from this distinguished poet and versatile man of letters, his sprightly new book isn't just deeply knowledgeable, it's also a lot of fun.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post