Michael Washburn, Author at Book and Film Globe

Marc Bloch Enters the Panthéon

July 14, 2026July 14, 2026 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Alan Riding, Alsace, And the Show Went On, André Malraux, Antisemitism, Charles de Gaulle, Charlie Hebdo, Dreyfus Affair, Émile Zola, France, Franco-Prussian War, French history, French military, French politics, French Resistance, Holocaust, immigration, Jean Jaurès, Jewish history, L'Étrange Défaite, Marc Bloch, Marshal Philippe Pétain, Mein Kampf, military history, National identity, National security, Nazi Germany, Pantheon, Paris attacks 2015, Resistance history, Sorbonne, The Strange Defeat, Vichy France, Victor Hugo, World War II

A resistance hero and historian who exposed French antisemitism gets his due

BOOKS

Happy 100th, Allen Ginsberg!

June 3, 2026June 3, 2026 Michael Washburn 0 Comments 1960s America, Allen Ginsberg, American literature, American poetry, Beat Generation, Beat poets, book criticism, Columbia University, counterculture, cultural history, Firing Line, Franz Kafka, Howl, Howl and Other Poems, individual freedom, Jack Kerouac, literary culture, literary history, LSD and creativity, Marilyn Monroe centennial, modern poetry, National Review, poetry books, poetry criticism, San Francisco Renaissance, The Essential Ginsberg, William Blake, William F Buckley Jr, William S. Burroughs, William Wordsworth

One of the best minds of his generation, not quite sidelined by madness

BOOKS Featured Stories Theater

A ‘Giant’ Arrives on Broadway

April 5, 2026April 8, 2026 Michael Washburn 1 Comment 1983 setting, American vs British Jews, Antisemitism, author controversy, Aya Cash, book publishing crisis, Booker Prize history, British theatre, class dynamics Britain, Farrar Straus, freedom of speech vs responsibility, Giant play, Great Missenden, Holocaust survivor narrative, Israel criticism, Israel Lebanon conflict, Jessie Stone character, jewish identity, John Lithgow, Lebanon War 1982, Literary adaptation, Mark Rosenblatt, Middle East politics, PR crisis, public backlash, publishing industry, Roald Dahl, The Witches, Tom Maschler

A new play about the Roald Dahl scandal lands stateside after sold-out West End run

Not Quite Into the ‘Mouth of the Wolf’

March 19, 2026March 22, 2026 Michael Washburn 6 Comments Amanda Knox, Amanda Knox case, Christopher Robinson, Giuliano Mignini, Hulu documentaries, Innocence Project, Italian justice system, Meredith Kercher, Mouth of the Wolf, Perugia murder case, Raffaele Sollecito, Rudy Guede, trial by media, true crime documentaries

Amanda Knox goes back to Italy with her husband

BOOKS Featured Stories

Jack Kerouac on the Run

March 15, 2026March 18, 2026 Michael Washburn 1 Comment Allen Ginsberg, Beat Generation, Grolier Club, Jack Kerouac, literary exhibitions, On The Road, William S. Burroughs

A new Grolier Club exhibition reveals unexpected sides of the Beat writer — an athlete and artist whose literary destiny was born from a freak accident.

BOOKS Featured Stories

Jane Addiction

January 20, 2026February 5, 2026 Michael Washburn 0 Comments book history, Grolier Club, Jane Austen, literary culture, literary exhibitions, publishing history, women writers

A new exhibition displays documents from Austen’s global fame

BOOKS

On the Internet, Every Century is a Dog

January 11, 2026January 13, 2026 Michael Washburn 2 Comments American literature, cancel culture, Hawaii Literature, Jack London, Martin Eden, Oakland History, Race and Literature, The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, White Fang

Looking back at Jack London on the 150th anniversary of his birth

AUTHOR STUFF BOOKS

What Can We Learn From the Literary Lives Portrayed in 2025

December 31, 2025December 31, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments 2025 books, author biographies, authors supporting authors, creative communities, Frank O'Hara, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry James, James Schuyler, John Ashbery, Leo Damrosch, literary biography, literary history, literary memoirs, Margaret Atwood, Nathan Kernan, New York School poetry, poets and writers, Robert E. Howard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Weird Tales, Willard M Oliver, writing life

Biographies and memoirs of Margaret Atwood, Robert Louis Stevenson and others show the importance of mentors

BOOKS

John Grisham Wrote the Christmas Novel You Didn’t Know You Needed

December 24, 2025December 24, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments A Time to Kill, Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Joe Roth, John Grisham, M. Emmet Walsh, The Firm, The Scarlet Letter, Tim Allen

‘Skipping Christmas’ is the thriller writer’s most atypical and mordantly funniest work

BOOKS

‘An American Tragedy’ at 100

December 17, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments A Place in the Sun, American dream, American literature, An American Tragedy, classic novels, literary anniversaries, social realism, Theodore Dreiser, true crime inspiration

A novel of Dostoyevskian scope examines a social dynamic baked into the present no less than the world of 1925

Biography BOOKS DOCUMENTARY Featured Stories FILM NON-FICTION

The Counterfactual Adulation of Amanda Knox

November 5, 2025November 11, 2025 Michael Washburn 133 Comments Amanda Knox, European Court of Human Rights, Free: My Search for Meaning, Giuliano Mignini, Jessica Olin, John Kercher, London Review of Books, Meredith Kercher, Patrick Lumumba, Rudy Guede, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, true crime, Valerie Stivers

The claim there is ‘no evidence’ against Knox in the 2007 death of her housemate rears its head yet again

BOOKS Featured Stories Politics

Hell: A Guided Tour

October 31, 2025November 3, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments #metoo, abuse survivors, British monarchy, crime nonfiction, Donald Trump, Epstein case, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Knopf, Mar a Lago, memoir, Nobody’s Girl, Peter Mandelson, Prince Andrew, royal scandal, sex trafficking, survivor stories, Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Virginia Roberts Guiffre’s harrowing memoir describes the sleazy, brutal underworld of sex trafficking and the vicious predators who reigned there

FILM

Nightmare on Sequel Street

October 22, 2025October 21, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments 2025 horror, Black Phone 2, Book and Film Globe, Ethan Hawke, Freddy Krueger, horror franchise fatigue, horror sequels, Jeremy Davies, Joe Hill, Joe Hill adaptations, Madeleine McGraw, Mason Thames, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scott Derrickson

‘Black Phone 2’ features a poor man’s Freddy Krueger

BOOKS Writers

Unbearable Tensions: The Life, Work, and Bizarre Death of Yukio Mishima

October 18, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments Confessions of a Mask, Donald Keene, Henry Scott Stokes, Japan Society New York, Japanese literature, Japanese theater, Julia Hansell Clark, Kinkakuji, Le Tambour de Soie, modern Japan, Noh adaptation, Osamu Dazai, postwar identity, The Damask Drum, The Silk Drum, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, Yukio Mishima centennial

Remembering a troubled Japanese master on his centenary

BOOKS Featured Stories

That Is Not Dead Which Still Sells

September 10, 2025September 15, 2025 Michael Washburn 0 Comments H.P. Lovecraft, Sonia Greene

Weldon Owen’s new deluxe edition may be the most ambitious H.P. Lovecraft publication to date

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