Tony Daniel
Novels, Short Stories, Screenplays, Poetry, Reviews, and Nonfiction
Tony Daniel Reviews ‘Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee’ for the ‘Federalist’
The true crime work, Furious Hours, explores a lurid 1977 southern murder trial that almost inspired Harper Lee to write another book—but the author’s pretentious account leans heavily on inaccurate and unflattering Southern stereotypes, writes Tony Daniel.
“Furious Hours is readable when Cep is immersed in the real details of this macabre-yet-entertaining pile of horrific skullduggery,” Tony says. “But when she tries to shape her material into a fable of intolerance and stymied artistic creation, she comes off as a race-baiter and, worse, as an inept observer who is out of her depth on matters of history and human motivation.”
Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Reviews ‘Top Gun: An American Story,’ the Memoir of Topgun Founder Dan Pedersen, at the ‘Federalist’
Tony describes how in Dan Pedersen’s engaging new memoir, Top Gun: An American Story, Topgun’s original commanding officer recounts his role as the founder of the famed fighter jet program. Pedersen makes the case that what matters is the man, not the machine. Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Reviews Master Essayist John McPhee’s Latest Collection, ‘The Patch,’ at the Federalist
Tony Daniel reviews essay collection The Patch, by John McPhee, and discusses McPhee’s work in general, which has been highly influential on Tony.
Read Tony’s piece here.
In a Review at the ‘Federalist,’ Tony Daniel Says Glenn Reynolds’s ‘The Social Media Upheaval’ Persuasively Fleshes out the Instapundit Law Prof’s Argument for Trust-busting the Silicon Valley Giants
Tony Daniel says that Instapundit creator and law professor Glenn Reynolds has a deceptively simple prose style. He calls Reynolds “the master of the understated quip,” and likens him to “a blogging Diogenes in a barrel.”
Tony argues that the book is a mostly a dead-on argument by analogy that compares social media vitriol to the spread of disease in ancient cities–with the distinction that our modern cities of the mind, such as Facebook, are designed to spread the disease by encouraging addictive behavior.
Daniel says Reynolds makes the case the best solution is to avoid attempting to regulate content, but to break up the social media monopolists using antitrust laws.
Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Writes on His Curmudgeonly Disdain for Therapy Animals at the ‘Federalist’
The only therapy animal that works is another human being, argues Tony Daniel at the Federalist.
Read the essay here.
Tony Daniel Reviews a Biography of Chief Justice John Roberts “The Chief” by CNN Analyst Joan Biskupic at the ‘Federalist’
Tony Daniel argues that CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic’s biography of Chief Justice John Roberts The Chief is so preoccupied with disagreeing with the man that it doesn’t provide much insight into Roberts’s life and rulings.
Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Reviews Essay Collection ‘White’ by Bret Easton Ellis at the ‘Federalist’
Tony Daniel says that novelist and cultural commentator Bret Easton Ellis’s new collection of essays, White tears into the proponents of “woke” culture for eroding free expression and encouraging victimhood. Despite some melodramatic overwriting and amusing naiveté regarding the excesses of the identity-politics-drunk mob, Ellis’s judgement is sound: freedom of expression is all-important to an artist or writer.
Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Pens Tribute to Great SF Writer Gene Wolfe at the ‘Federalist’
Gene Wolfe died recently at age 87. Tony Daniel says Wolfe was a major influence on him, and one of the greats of American letters.
Tony writes in the piece: “I’m quite sure that Wolfe’s reputation will recover and grow in the coming years. He’s as good as the best we’ve had in American letters, and, though there are many great contenders, he’s my pick for the best science fiction writer of them all.”
Read the essay here.
Tony Daniel Gives a Mixed Review to ‘Educated,’ the Best-selling Memoir by Tara Westover, at the ‘Federalist’
“I came away from Educated feeling like I’d just stepped in something nasty,” Tony says in the piece.
While finding Tara Westover’s tale of self-educating herself affecting, Tony says her account is thin on detail and nuance. Ultimately, Educated suffers from the problem of all confessional memoirs: you don’t know who to believe. Better to just write a novel when dealing with such themes, Tony contends.
Read the review here.
Tony Daniel Remembers Luke Perry
Tony Daniel expressed sadness over the recent and untimely death of actor Luke Perry.
Tony worked for a day with Luke Perry in 2000, when Perry starred in “Island of Death,” a radio play Tony wrote for Seeing Ear Theatre. This was part of the Tales from the Crypt SCIFI.COM series Seeing Ear Theatre produced by Tony’s friend and occasional screenwriting coauthor, Brian Smith. Tony was the story editor on the series as well, and wrote or cowrote several of the other episodes.
Tony remembers Perry as a very nice guy who hung out with the day players between takes, and was gracious to the crew.
