Lit Hub rounds up five reviews this week, and two of them stand out for their warmth. Joseph O’Neill praises Jared Weisberg’s Profiles in Cowardice as “dauntless,” while Hua Hsu calls Brian Dillon’s Ambivalence a “strange, bewitching experiment.”
The collection comes from Book Marks, Lit Hub’s book-review hub. It pairs a political biography with four memoirs and essays, covering courage, adolescence, and artistic formation across the week’s reading.
Weisberg’s Study of Collaboration
Weisberg’s book takes on the Trump era directly. He writes that the nation has entered a period of cravenness, where “powerful Americans… quickly revealed themselves to be cowardly and unprincipled.” He draws a comparison to John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, but flips it: his subjects are not heroes, they are cowards.
O’Neill notes that Weisberg is careful not to oversimplify. Standing up to authority can cost a career, isolate a person, and complicate institutional duties. Weisberg’s argument, as O’Neill reads it, is that these excuses hold only so far. The subjects are voluntary members of the elite, at no risk of prison or ruin.
Dillon’s Autobiographical Experiment
Dillon’s memoir is a third-person account of his own teenage years. He calls the narrator “young ‘B'” and treats his own past as a subject for scrutiny, not confession. The book looks at writers like Walter Benjamin, Joan Didion, and James Baldwin, asking how craft creates effect.
Hua Hsu describes the result as an unusual form of autobiography. There are no friendships or love affairs, only digressions on books and ideas. The trauma of losing his parents gets less attention than the emotional force of Virginia Woolf or Roland Barthes.
The Other Reviews
Felipe De La Hoz reviews Mahmoud Khalil’s No Land to Stand On. Edna Bonhomme reviews Imani Thompson’s Honey. Jeremy Gordon reviews Jon Ronson’s The Castle.
Each review is a separate entry on Lit Hub, though the round-up collects them together.
What We Make of It
The two standout reviews share a pattern. Both authors find value in writers who refuse to smooth their own reputations. Weisberg faces his subjects honestly, and O’Neill calls him “dauntless” for it. Dillon turns inward with detachment, and Hsu calls it a “bewitching experiment.”
Neither review settles for easy praise. O’Neill acknowledges that resistance carries costs. Hsu notes that Dillon’s method is anything but conventional. Both critics treat the books as genuine achievements rather than simple self-promotion.
The pairing is instructive. One book looks outward at public figures; the other looks inward at a young reader. Together they suggest that courage can be found in facing oneself as well as in standing against authority.
Key Facts Box
- Reviews: 5, via Lit Hub’s Book Marks
- Authors: Joseph O’Neill, Hua Hsu, Felipe De La Hoz, Edna Bonhomme, Jeremy Gordon
- Books reviewed: Profiles in Cowardice, Ambivalence, No Land to Stand On, Honey, The Castle
Comparison Table
| Author | Book | Critical Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Jared Weisberg | Profiles in Cowardice | Case studies of elite cowardice |
| Brian Dillon | Ambivalence | Third-person memoir of adolescence |
The round-up is worth reading for the full range of voices. The two reviews that praise their subjects most warmly are the ones to return to.
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