Rowman & Littlefield Review by Brian Tanguay Unsolved murders are commonplace in some parts of the world. People disappear, bodies are dumped, and overwhelmed, under-resourced or corrupt officials refuse to…
Category: Nonfiction
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn
Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins Meghan O’Gieblyn opens and closes God, Human, Animal, Machine with detailed descriptions of her meaningful relationships with beings—in effect, machines— that were the creations of…
The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell
Harper One Review by George Yatchisin You know you’re in great authorial hands when on page two of this book Evelyn McDonnell insists about her subject Joan Didion, “Narrative was…
California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline by Rosanna Xia
Heyday Review by David Starkey In California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, Rosanna Xia, an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, writes: “When talking about climate…
Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu
Norton Review by Walter Cummins You probably haven’t realized it, but at this very moment you’re reading intellectual property (IP). It’s a new concept to me too. I’ve been writing…
My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine by Sami Hermez with Sireen Sawalha
Redwood Press Review by Brian Tanguay When Great Britain was granted responsibility for Palestine under a League of Nations mandate in 1920, it limited Jewish immigration in order to maintain…
Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era by Alison Rose Jefferson
University of Nebraska Press Review by Brian Tanguay History is a curious thing, sometimes all around us and unavoidable and at other times hidden from view, obscured by time and…
The Lichen Museum by A. Laurie Palmer
Minnesota Review by David Starkey Readers thinking that lichen don’t sound like the most scintillating topic for a book have a valid concern. After all, these organisms created by the…
Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay Abraham Lincoln believed that democracy was the single greatest achievement in human history. How Lincoln came to this belief is less well known than other…
The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired the World’s Great Authors by Jackie Bennett, with photographs by Richard Hanson
Frances Lincoln Review by David Starkey Does a writer need a garden to write? Obviously not, but The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired the World’s Great Authors suggests that having…