Best known for the 1972 smash hit The Joy of Sex, the protean author Alex Comfort was actually a respected public intellectual influential in a variety of fields, as detailed in this new biography by Eric Laursen.
Reviewed by Richard Kostelanetz
With a scientist’s perspective, a sea captain’s knowledge, and a poet’s soul, Hannah Stowe immerses readers in the world of the ocean in her debut memoir.
Reviewed by Elissa Greenwald
With a style exemplary of the international post-beat avant-garde, Nina Zivancevic’s travel writing is a welcome departure from the colonialist norm.
Reviewed by Jim Cohn
In her new memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived, Karen DeBonis draws upon the various meanings of the word with exquisite vulnerability.
Reviewed by Blair Glaser
A recent anthology edited by Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold explores the lyric essay's new ranges of shapes and impulses.
Reviewed by Garin Cycholl
In their latest book, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway point out that dislike of government and antagonism towards science, labor unions, and social programs are neither coincidental nor unplanned.
Reviewed by George Longenecker
In his newest book, Jonathan Taplin sees the United States as going down a dangerous road of what he calls “techno-determinism.”
Reviewed by Doug MacLeod
Adam Hochschild’s account of America’s long-ago “midnight” has much to tell us about the politics we have inherited in our own day.
Reviewed by Robert Zaller
Joanna Biggs’s deeply felt connection to each of the writers she considers in this book revitalizes established literary lore, reframing each woman’s trajectory through personally resonant lenses of resurgence and rebirth.
Reviewed by Ellie Eberlee
In a memoir that details moving from the solitude of shame to the loving acceptance of family, Cathryn Vogeley also offers an enlightening examination of secret adoptions. Reviewed by Sandra Eliason