All Book Reviews
- In two memoirs, authors of color meditate on birding and identity
Two authors, one Black and one Native American, explore the complex ways their love for birding is mediated by racial identity.
If you map it, they will come: The effort to chart the seafloorJournalist Laura Trethewey plunges into the intense race to map the oceans – and the potential for exploitation of one of the planet’s few remaining frontiers.
The fall of Saigon split families apart. Hers was among them.Beth Nguyen was separated from her mother when the family left Vietnam. In “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” she grapples with the question: Does the pain of absence ease with time?
Two to tango: Mark Billingham mystery explores partnershipDropping us into a rainy town, the novel “The Last Dance” gives readers a gripping protagonist, deadpan humor, and thoughtful attention to love and loss.
Around the world in four novels: Newly translated fictionWith settings from Siberia to Seoul, these bestselling novels offer English speakers a taste of the world.
A chef’s story reflects US-Mexico border tensionsIn “The Migrant Chef,” author Laura Tillman follows the saga of Mexican restaurateur Lalo García to paint a more humane picture of migrants who cross the border.
How Jefferson’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ phrase came to beHistorian Peter Moore examines six Enlightenment thinkers who influenced Thomas Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
How the changing world affected Mozart’s music, piece by pieceFrom the Enlightenment to the French Revolution, the ideas swirling through Europe were absorbed and transmuted by Mozart into peerless music.
‘The Wounded World’ probes one of W.E.B. Du Bois’ greatest regretsEsteemed scholar W.E.B. Du Bois urged Black men to enlist in World War I. As a new book explores, the decision haunted him for the rest of his life.
‘Loot’ weaves an epic tale of imperialism, plunder, and autonomyIn this book, a gifted Indian artist pines for recognition, self-determination, and love across decades and continents.
‘The End of Drum-Time’ weaves a poignant tale of clashing culturesSet in 19th-century Scandinavia, “The End of Drum-Time” pits the indigenous Sámi people against European settlers trying to impose their religion and values.
How Black people were left behind in Civil War-era BostonAbolitionists’ “soaring rhetoric of freedom and equality” didn’t match the reality for Black workers struggling to earn a livelihood.
Julia Child, Jane Austen, and sleuths of a certain ageIn need of some armchair travel? Curl up with spring’s new mysteries where adventure abounds in San Francisco, Paris, and England.
‘Curveball’: When spiritual skepticism leads to sturdier faithWhen his long-held religious assumptions no longer held up, Peter Enns took a deep dive into Christianity. He surfaced with a more expansive faith, chronicled in “Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming.”
How an MIT scientist paved the way for women in scienceIn 1999, women in science celebrated a major victory when MIT admitted to gender discrimination and became a pacesetter for equality. Kate Zernike recounts the inspiring story in, “The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science.”
Reviving woolly mammoths and a mom’s relationship with her daughtersWomen in science are trending in fiction as well as nonfiction. In the novel “The Last Animal,” a paleobiologist and her teenage daughters travel to Siberia to revive woolly mammoths.
Brilliant, prescient, troubled: The man behind Cold War containmentAs the architect of U.S. Cold War policy toward the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan believed his ideas had been badly misinterpreted. A powerful new biography probes a complex and often tormented man.
Sci-fi novel ‘Cold People’ explores ethics of human bioengineeringAfter aliens banish humans to Antarctica, scientists develop a new breed of children who are super-adapted to frigid conditions in Tom Rob Smith’s dystopian novel “Cold People.”
Grief and resilience: Lessons from Emerson, Thoreau, and JamesThe three 19th-century American thinkers transmuted grief and loss into works of great power and eloquence, which speak to modern-day audiences.
Two white abolitionists discover Black family members. Complexity ensues.Kerri K. Greenidge explores the complicated legacy of the Grimkes, white abolitionist sisters whose Black nephews were subjected to their aunts’ conflicting motives and expectations.
