Online Exclusive Book Reviews

Cowboys Are My Weakness

Julia Claiborne Johnson’s Better Luck Next Time takes place in the 1930s at a Reno, Nevada, divorce ranch.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost
In Desert Oracle, Ken Layne goes all in on the Mojave’s lore—and lur…
City of Angels

In The System, Ryan Gattis uncovers Los Angeles’s corrupted heart.
Redemption Song

Walter Mosley transcends genre with The Awkward Black Man.
The Book of Love
Felicia Luna Lemus’s Particulate Matter is a memoir of intimacy and …

Alta Books Editor David L. Ulin presents a weekly critique of a title from or about the West, reviewed by some of the best writers and authors in the region. Find the latest here every Monday. 

Nov 30, 2020
The Horse’s Mouth

Jane Smiley’s Perestroika in Paris is a fairy tale for adults.
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Nov 23, 2020
A New Essay Collection Takes Us On an American Road Trip

Tom Zoellner’s The National Road seeks to take the measure of America.
Nov 16, 2020
The Better Angels of His Nature

In Every Day We Get More Illegal, Juan Felipe Herrera doubles down on hope.
Nov 9, 2020
A Parable of Paradox

In The Arrest, Jonathan Lethem imagines a world in the throes of apocalypse.
Nov 2, 2020
Kindred Spirits

Lynell George channels Octavia E. Butler in A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky.
Oct 26, 2020
Live Through This

In A Kingdom of Tender Colors, Seth Greenland recalls his cancer diagnosis and recovery with humor and grace.
Oct 19, 2020
The Wounds of History

Roberto Lovato’s Unforgetting chronicles public and private wars.
Oct 12, 2020
Fractured Fairy Tales

With Likes, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum makes magic out of the mundane.
Aug 12, 2020
What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Alfred Hayes writes with excruciating irony in The End of Me.
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