A Year of Birds: Writings on Birds from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Geoff Wisner, illustrated by Barry Van Dusen

Mercer Review by David Starkey I happened to spend last Saturday morning at Walden pond, on a warm October day, with plenty of people fishing, swimming in the 68-degree water…

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins Kate Atkinson’s title for her sixth Jackson Brodie detective novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook, offers a broad hint that she is about…

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania by Kathryn Hughes

Johns Hopkins Review by Walter Cummins Kathryn Hughes appears to have taken great pleasure in writing Catland, bouncing back and forth between considering the life of Louis Wain, an artist…

Ain’t No Grave by Mary Glickman

Open Road Review by Jinny Webber Based on an infamous episode from Georgia history as experienced by two childhood friends, Ain’t No Grave paints a unique picture of early twentieth…

Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream by Susanna Crossman

Penguin Review by Linda Lappin London. Amid the exhilarating social turbulence of the 1970s, Alison, a single mother, packed up her three children and headed off to a commune to…

Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States by Stephanie L. Canizales

University of California Press Review by Brian Tanguay Imagine for a moment that you’re a fourteen-year-old boy living in El Salvador with your family — mother, father, and multiple younger…

That Old Country Music: stories by Kevin Barry

Doubleday Review by Brian Tanguay “It informed me that there had been others before as deranged by matters of the heart and loins as I was now.” This line from…

In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif

Penguin Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega At nearly 800 pages, Ahdaf Soueif’s 1992 debut novel is a rewarding undertaking, a sort of modern Anna Karenina set in mid-20th century Egypt,…

A Walk with Frank O’Hara by Susan Aizenberg

New Mexico Review by H. L. Hix Frank O’Hara himself is not a recurring presence in Susan Aizenberg’s new volume, but the themes introduced in the title poem, which opens…

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age To AI by Yuval Noah Harari

Random House Review by Walter Cummins It turns out that Yuval Noah Harari, in Nexus, his latest book, isn’t a complete fatalist. But one has to read to the end…