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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New York Times writer Peter S. Goodman does not like Davos Man. At all. And his new book does an excellent job explaining why — focusing on the rich getting richer as the COVID-19 pandemic raged.
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While Kirby has a clear predilection for the bizarre, she plays some of her stories in her new book, Shit Cassandra Saw, straight — and those are just as entertaining as the fantastical ones.
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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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Scarlett Thomas' novel, set among wealthy girls at a British boarding school, is an audacious examination of disordered eating and social competition that turns dark when one of the girls drowns.
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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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Peter Houlahan's account of the violent robbery and its aftermath is based on interviews with civilians, officers and robbers involved; his prose reads like a crime novel in the best way possible.
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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.