BOA Blog

A new review from Booklist's Diego Báez praises BOA author Ray Gonzalez and "his invaluable role in American literature." The review focuses on Gonzalez's new book, Beautiful Wall, his seventh collection of poetry from BOA Editions. "Gonzalez, a celebrated and prolific poet, delivers another rich volume of exquisite verse, focusing on the beauty and ambiguity of walls, both literal and  metaphorical." Báez notes that Gonzalez's speaker "considers the epidemic of violence that plagues the U.S.-Mexico border," but also "balances this severity with a roster of creative beacons, referring often to artists and authors from around the globe." The result of...

Photo courtesy of PokerNews.com Poker News just today released a new review of James McManus' The Education of a Poker Player, along with an accompanying interview with the author. Giving the book high praise, reviewer Chad Holloway says, "There's good reason why Jim McManus is often referred to as the 'Shakespeare of Poker.' "Any serious poker fan has read Positively Fifth Street, widely considered one of the best poker narratives ever written, while Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker is the most comprehensive text on poker's expansive history. Now, McManus has added another poker book, The Education of a Poker...

Weekly Portland newspaper The Portland Mercury just published a wonderful and thoughtful review of James McManus' The Education of a Poker Player. According to reviewer Ned Lannamann, "James McManus' new book doesn't have the narrative arc of a novel, but it has the soul of one. "McManus' real theme is [protagonist] Vince's Catholicism and his struggle with the burdens of religion in his formative years. More specifically, as Vince enters adolescence, the notion of staying celibate becomes less and less appealing, not to mention logical." Education's greatest triumph, the review claims, is McManus' deft exploration of the parallels between Catholicism and poker....

Booklist reviewer Bill Ott is praising the "zesty prose" of James McManus' new collection of linked stories, The Education of a Poker Player. "Despite its title," says the review, "this is not another poker memoir by the author of Positively Fifth Street; rather, it is a collection of seven McManus short stories about the coming-of-age of Vincent Killeen, a Catholic altar boy whose path to the priesthood in the late 1950s and early ’60s is derailed by sex and poker. What John R. Powers did for Catholic boys on the South Side of Chicago in his classic memoir Do Black...

Wilmott Magazine's Aaron Brown has high praise for The Education of a Poker Player, the new collection of linked stories from James McManus. In his thorough review of McManus' work, Brown examines closely "the legacy of three books whose honesty transcends factual truth," comparing McManus' Education with Herbert O. Yardley's The Education of a Poker Player and Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams. As Brown notes, these books share more than similar titles: "Taken together, these three The Education of books are an excellent way to understand the American 20th century from the people who lived it." While McManus' Education explores the...