Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America

For more than two hundred years, book reviewers have influenced American readers, setting our literary agenda by helping us determine not only what we read but also what we think about what we read. And for nearly as long, critics of these critics have lambasted book reviews for their overpraise, hostility, banality, and bias.Faint Praise takes a hard and long-overdue look at the institution of bo...