notanotherbookreview

 THE BOX BY PATRICK HAMILTON. TOP HONORS--BEST PLAY, BEST DIRECTOR AT NEW YORK CITY THEATER FESTIVAL-  THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY'S DREAM UP FESTIVAL PRODUCTION - Produced by Terry Nguyn and Patrick Hamilton, Executive Produced by Chelsea J. Smith and Darrell Shipley What is gripping about this play? There's the fast direct open-ended plot with unexpected turns in the story. There's dynamic, yet subtle well-nuanced performances. The minimal set has maximum impact. Each piece's purpose is highlighted by the lighting and acting. I also like the TNC relaxed, funky atmosphere. This place has a heritage of putting on plays that matter.  The subject of this play could not be timelier. In the production at TNC, I saw how the history and mindsets of these characters seem to mirror the bitter divisions in the U.S., where opposing visions are  vying for power.  It also amplifies the emotional gulf between men and women, trying to make their own more perfect unions. ...

 THE VEILED PROPHET:    Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggles for St. Louis by DEVIN THOMAS O'SHEA. ( Haymarket Books, 6/26)                                              What was the Veiled Prophet Society? And why might we care about a secret society (now defunct) founded a century and a half ago in St. Louis? Devin Thomas O'Shea's excellent and little-known history, THE VEILED PROPHET : Secret Societies, white supremacy, and the struggle for St. Louis  clarifies how this "prestige brokerage" strongly affected U.S. History and modern political structures.  In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when Gen Lee surrendered at Appomattox, disillusioned Confederate soldiers, including future Veiled Profit founder, Alonzo Slayback, went looting in Mexico. Their loss of the Southern way of life included property both human...

                                                                         SOMETIME THIS CENTURY (Harper Collins 6/9) by Samantha Silva is a delightful Regency comedy, as well as a modern puzzle. I may not be a typical reader of the Regency genre, having stumbled upon Bridgerton on Netflix and then read all volumes of Julia Quint's witty original. With a 21st century eye, I fixed on the very circumscribed lives of women, privileged or not, when the only acceptable career was "marrying well." Even being a novelist (Austen was known, if not as famous in her lifetime) was a family secret. Silva's novel has a lot of fun with Regency style, tradition and moneyed romance. There's also a sly comparison with our modern social behavior,...

Is honesty still a Virtue in 2026? Well yes, though it's under siege, writes Christian B. Miller in THE HONESTY CRISIS : Preserving our most treasured virtue in an increasingly dishonest worl d  (Oxford University Press. This book is a rare investigation of a value essential for humanity, despite our runaway "for profit everything" culture. Miller's position about honesty is also rare.  Though a Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest, who previously published Moral Psychology (2021, Oxford), his literary voice reminded me of Emerson's in  Nature and  Self Reliance.  Investigating what exists in human character and our world, Miller is no smug academic championing obsolete values. Honesty is still the virtue people most value in public and private character. The human spirit suffers from casually accepted deceit. Students' growing inability to resist having AI write their papers is a serious concern to Miller. What's the harm in using such "tools?...

 The Playground NY/LA , Barefoot Theatre Company & Pontifex Productions presents ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by KEN KESEY. Directed by Francisco Solorzano (April 30th-May17th, 2026)      During the Vietnam War era, the politics surrounding ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO's NEST , the novel, were volatile. "Counterculture" was not a "trend" in a time, when the nightly news showed the ritual of body bags being unloaded from planes for burial. Thousands of young men were dying in what was increasingly viewed as a brutal lost cause, a superpower game. Canada was the destination for an underground railroad of young men fleeing the war; whether students with high numbers in the lottery, or soldiers in the U.S. After the Kent State shooting of peaceful student protestors, a photo of a young woman placing a flower inside a gun barrel, was famous, as "They Shoot Students Don't They" marathon dances on campuses rais...

Connor Martin's debut novel , THE SILVER FISH, is an espionage fiction, where the personal and the political are intertwined in ways unanticipated. Unlike Le Carre's  Smiley's People (1979), where the British, U.S., and Russian networks and operatives seem clearly delineated,  THE SILVER FISH  layers the complexity of players and objectives into the implacable business of international corporations and governments. Human beings, local "foot soldiers" with ambiguous ambitions, are expendable and always in flux, amid competing and mutable goals  A prelude to this new world disorder might be the apocryphal story about Putin rumbling around the Kremlin "basement" during his Covid lock-down. Pondering the scattered legacy of Catharine the Great's Empire, he vowed to regain the lost territories of that empire. If true, did Putin's machinations intersect with Trump's debt to him?  (After multiple bankruptcies in the 1980s, Trump did visit Russia in ...