One of the memoir’s greatest strengths is the sense it conveys of Bacon as a social animal, gregarious and full of contradictions… read more

Bingham’s book provides a fascinating if dispiriting record of the 20th century’s oscillating acceptance of homosexuality in England and America… read more

This is an important book, and an impressive feat of scholarship drawing on nearly five hundred sources, with twenty-two pages of notes and sixteen pages of photographs. … read more

“The book’s central thesis is that our modern-day cult of celebrity, in the Kardashian sense of unaccomplished people famous for being famous, had its beginnings in Wilde’s American tour.”… read more

“The Tastemaker is essential reading for anyone interested in how America emerged from the cultural shadow of Europe in the last century.”… read more

A really good biography is a gateway drug that sends readers immediately in search of more works on and by its subject. For those unfamiliar with Gore Vidal, Tim Teeman’s book should trigger an irresistible urge to learn more about the life and literary output of the brilliant controversial writer who died in 2012 at… read more

Herbert Huncke, heretofore a footnote in biographies of the Beats, has long deserved his own biography, and in American Hipster (Magnus Books), Hilary Holladay, a renowned Kerouac scholar, has given us a fascinating portrait of the man who gave the Beat movement its name. Born in 1915, Huncke was raised in Chicago by ill-matched middle-class… read more