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★★★★★ Mass migration is in the news almost daily, but what’s lost in stark headlines and impassioned tweets is the human element. But people don’t leave their homes or their countries, often for good,...
★★☆☆☆ Sub-titled “Stories From the Peatlands,” The Dark Stuff is far too textbook-like and not appealing enough for the casual reader. The facts are very nice but the writing does not resonate: it just...
★★★★☆ Chances are that if you’ve picked up Good and Mad, you are already there. That’s by design. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger is channeling liberal women’s anger into an exposition...
★★★★☆ Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness “explores perhaps the most brilliant and baffling gift of modern medicine: the disappearing act that enables doctors and dentists to carry out surgery and...
★★★★☆ Kevin Young’s Bunk is an absolutely delightful, well-researched journey through the minefields of “Hoaxes, Humbugs, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News.” From the public’s gullibility that made P.T. Barnum rich to Internet trolls,...
★★★☆☆ Former president of Ireland and UN Special Envoy on Climate Change Mary Robinson has compiled a solid new addition to the arsenal of tools with which to discuss the world’s encroaching climate troubles....
★★★★★ Susan Orlean’s latest book is a warm, intelligent read you should curl up with in your favorite reading nook — possibly at the library — if you want to feel better about the...
★★★★☆ In Walls: a History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, David Frye has written an encompassing and enlightening review of walls through the centuries, ranging from 2000 B.C. to the present. A “Selected Timeline”...
★★★★★ No Good Alternative is the second half of William T. Vollmann’s Carbon Ideologies, a sprawling two-volume presentation on the world’s energy consumption and its resultant environmental dangers. Together, the two parts of Carbon...
