Tony Buchsbaum

Non-Fiction: The Way We Were: The Making of a Romantic Classic by Tom Santopietro

June 5, 2023 Tony Buchsbaum 0

The Way We Were is one of my favorite movies. What’s not to love? It’s got Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford at the top of their games. It’s got the timeless, Oscar-winning song by Marvin Hamlisch and Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It has Hamlisch’s lush, Oscar-winning score, plus 1950s-era politics; and rich, juicy dollops of romance as the two ill-fated opposites attract each other. I was eager to read a book about how the movie […]

Fiction: The Acrobat by Edward J. Delaney

November 18, 2022 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Who doesn’t love Cary Grant? In comedies with Katharine Hepburn and thrillers directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant was the man every woman wanted to sleep with and the man every man wanted to be. Handsome. Mannered. Glamorous. Even when his movies were in color, he was the epitome of classy black-and-white. But who was the Archie Leach behind Cary Grant? Who was the man behind the icon? The new book The Acrobat, by Edward […]

Fiction: Falling by T.J. Newman

July 14, 2021 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Summer. Great for lounging by the pool or the ocean or on the sun porch, your nose in a good book. And of course what you want is a book whose thrills actually thrill, whose twists and turns cause whiplash, a book you really can’t put down. Dear reader, I introduce you to Falling by T.J. Newman. Imagine you’re an airline pilot, and you’re minutes into a long flight. You get a message: crash the […]

Fiction: Crossings by Alex Landrigan

July 24, 2020 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Over the years, there have been a good number of books that delight with messing with your mind. Think: House of Blue Leaves. Think: The Dictionary of the Khazars. Think: Cloud Atlas. And now there’s Crossings, a new mind-bender from Alex Landragin. I love books like this, but — also — I’ve never read a book like this. It’s an intelligent tale, ingeniously told. It’s not so much a puzzle for the reader, but it […]

American Dirty

February 12, 2020 Tony Buchsbaum 1

Maybe you’ve heard about the controversy surrounding the new novel, American Dirt (Flatiron). In case you haven’t, here’s a quick rundown. Written by Jeanine Cummins, the novel is about a bookseller in Mexico whose entire family is gunned down by members of a drug cartel. She and her young son are the only survivors. Afraid for their lives, she runs, hoping to get her boy safely across the U.S. border. In a bidding war, nine […]

New Fiction: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

November 12, 2019 Tony Buchsbaum 0

On a wall in my apartment is a cast iron sign. Carved through it is a row of boxwood hedges, and painted on it, on both sides, are a number and a word. Seven-one-one is the number. Boxwood is the word, the English translation of my last name. The sign hung outside my grandparents’ home on Meetinghouse Road in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. I mention this because the Buchsbaums of Elkins Park are mentioned several times […]

New Orleans Comes Alive in City of a Million Dreams

November 16, 2018 Tony Buchsbaum 1

I grew up in New Orleans in the 1960s, and I left in 1990. As I write this, it occurs to me that I have spent almost as much time away from the city as I did in it. I miss it, sometimes painfully, and I’ve been thinking recently that I don’t know enough about it, that I don’t understand my city as I should. It was my home, but such was my childhood that […]

New CD from Dear Evan Hansen Actor

February 6, 2018 Tony Buchsbaum 0

It’s possible you’ve never heard of Michael Lee Brown, but you’re about to—and I don’t mean just here. Michael appears on Broadway at least twice a week, and his first CD was released recently. It’s sure to be the first of many. Every Wednesday and Saturday, Brown plays Evan Hansen in the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, and he’s an alternate for Evan at other performances as well as for two other lead roles, […]

New Fiction: Need To Know by Karen Cleveland

February 1, 2018 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Of the new novel, Need to Know (Ballantine), thriller writer Lee Child said, “If you read chapter one, you’ll read chapter two. If you read chapter two, you’ll miss dinner, stay up far too late, and feel tired at work tomorrow.” As usual, Mr. Child nails it. And in this, her first novel, so does Karen Cleveland. Her writing is tack-sharp, her story is at least as addictive as today’s hottest street drug (maybe more), […]

Fiction: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

January 19, 2018 Tony Buchsbaum 0

In Chloe Benjamin’s luminous new novel, The Immortalists (Putnam), four siblings, all children, seek out a woman who, they’ve heard, can tell each of them the day they will die. Not how, but when. A casual few words: a month, a day, and a year. They’re given a glimpse around a corner and then go on with their lives, not oblivious exactly, but not unaffected by the information either. The year is 1969. The nation […]