Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City by Richard E. Ocejo

Princeton Review by David Starkey In the conclusion of his new book, Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City, Richard Ocejo, a sociology professor at John…

Life at the Dumpling by Trisha Cole

Review by George Yatchisin Despite the obvious misery of the pandemic, if you had the luck, privilege, and health to make it through, it also provided opportunity. It forced us…

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…

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…

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…

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…

What Is It Like to Be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer

Eastover Review by Walter Cummins Despite the seeming implication of Chris Arthur’s title of this, his tenth essay collection, he is not seeking an existential generalization about an abstract ontological…

Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York by Marin Kosut

Columbia Review by David Starkey If you’ve ever had a friend who is brilliant, super-sarcastic, notices everything, can be incredibly mean but always employs that anger in the service of…

Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence by Sara Imari Walker

Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins Before I attempt to say something about a book that theorizes life’s emergence from the perspective of the science of physics, I should admit that…

Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin by Andre Dubus III

Norton Review by Walter Cummins Andre Dubus III explores his vulnerabilities throughout the essays in this collection. Despite his literary regard and economic success as a writer and university teacher…