Six Amendments

Subtitled "How and Why We Should Change the Constitution," this short work by John Paul Stevens presents clearly and persuasively how six amendments could create "a more perfect union," which is what the Constitution is supposed to be about, after all. The areas include gun laws, the death penalty and gerrymandering, which most people are familiar with, but also the pernicious doctrine of sovereign immunity and the dangerous anti-commandeering doctrine, which will be news to many readers. Stevens showed in Five Chiefs how he brings clarity and rationality to his subject matter, and that is certainly true here.

Black Money

Ross Macdonald was in his prime in the 1960s, creating complex but believable stories with his seemingly effortless touch at dialogue and simile. Black Money is no exception and has the added advantage of containing a brief statement of Lew Archer's credo: I like people, and I try to help them. Archer is the best fictional detective I've ever encountered, with Maigret a close second.

Gringos

Highly atmospheric and picaresque, Charles Portis's entertaining final novel, Gringos, suffers only perhaps from a large cast of characters that becomes unwieldy in spots.

True Grit

Charles Portis's 1968 novel had escaped my attention till now, perhaps because I thought John Wayne's performance was just more Duke, nothing special. To go back to the source material and find a perfect, sharp, funny, touching novel was therefore a surprise and a pleasure. The character of Mattie Ross deserves a place next to Huckleberry Finn in American literature.

Dream Story

This is a polished gem of a story by Arthur Schnitzler, the basis for the film Eyes Wide Shut, that investigates marital relations and the temptations that imperil them. Dreams and reality are blurred to such an extent that by the end of the story the reader is left wondering whether the dreams recounted by the wife were actually dreams within the main dream of the husband. Look too far into the mind, Dream Story would seem to be saying, and you risk everything.

Bad Lawyer

I picked this one up on a bit of a misapprehension, seeing it mentioned in a New York Times column by a writer I enjoy. I thought it would be a deeply researched examination of the flaws of our legal system and the farcical behavior by its practitioners, but what I got was a millennial memoir with a few instructive anecdotes and the balance taken up with fairly routine personal matters presented as interesting. I'm not sure why a certain age cohort believes that its every move sparkles with originality, but someone needs to tell them that previous generations also got drunk, got high, and had sex, and that there is nothing less interesting than reading about people who are constantly getting drunk or high.

Putting the Rabbit in the Hat

Brian Cox's memoir ticks all the right boxes: a thorough but not overlong account of his childhood, the story of how he came to love acting, and a mostly chronological tour d'horizon of his career. The anecdotes are winning and the judgments are unfiltered and sharp.

Peril

This account by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its hideous aftermath was surprisingly packed with detailed accounts of policy and not just gossip, thus far outstripping Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury of 2018 in relevance. It is clear that no one in Trump's camp, possibly excluding a couple of lunatics, ever believed any of the false claims about a stolen election. It is also clear that no one in this camp had even the smallest amount of human decency required to publicly state this truth. The main problem is that the liars who are playing politics convince 70 million dupes to believe their lies. That population then becomes the predicate for hanging on to the lies and imperiling self-rule itself.

Face: One Square Foot of Skin

Using reported anecdotes to produce fictionalized vignettes is an effective way to get at Justine Bateman's subject: women's faces, how they are viewed as they age, and why some women feel compelled to "fix" them. The book is an urgent voice that needs to be heard by both men and women in a culture where "old" is literally yesterday.