Reading tough stuff is what we do. The first recommendation for today's reviews is about a book studying the aftermath of the Nagasaki atomi bomb strike, one often neglected as secondary to the Hiroshima explosion that happened a few days earlier. You've already debated this one in history class, but you ought to take another look because those were 70,000 human beings killed in an instant by our government in our name. If this strengthens or weakens your view of this event, it's up to you.
There are any number of great novelists today of whom you and I have never heard. Let this review take Bill Vollmann's name off the list. I've read some of his work and tried to read some his work; it's longer, more complicated and perhaps more tedious than I'd like to admit. Nonetheless, he's after something great, and he does it via extensive research and narratives that always mix fiction and memoir, reporting and fantasy. He even tries to rework some of the standard methods by which we convey language, as in this novel, "The Dying Grass", where he decides to left-flush the dialog, and separately indent the tag lines and inner thoughts of the characters.
You may never read a William Vollmann novel, but you ought to read a review, especially when it's written by Jane Smiley, who is an even better novelist you ought to know about.
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