A rare glimpse into the culture of the Middle Ages, Hana Videen’s whimsical book The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary dives into medieval manuscripts about animals both real and fantastical. Inflected by Christian beliefs and accounts... Read More

The unknown and serendipity get the last word in the tragicomic novel "Crossing Lake Pontchartrain", about a writer’s midlife crisis. In Arthur Byrd’s heartfelt novel "Crossing Lake Pontchartrain", a man pursues artistic liberation... Read More

A boy who died and saw heaven as a child grapples with his perceptions of the experience, Christianity, and his newfound sexual orientation in Eric Schlich’s humorous, introspective novel "Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife". Eli... Read More

Marcia A. Zug’s detailed social history You’ll Do covers the evolution of marriage via its economic and cultural motivators. Though the book examines other non-romantic motivations for love, such as colonists marrying Indigenous... Read More

The essays collected in "Good Eats" explore people’s relationships to food through personal stories of love, connection, and emotional literacy. Food is not just food, the book argues. To discuss food is to dig into the foundations of... Read More

The Exile’s Cookbook, Daniel L. Newman’s translation of Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī’s medieval gastronomic tome, is part history text, part cookbook. Featuring a lengthy introduction, it includes the contextual history behind its... Read More

With a small group of fellow explorers, Leon McCarron followed the Tigris River from its mountainous source to its mouth at the Persian Gulf. His travelogue, "Wounded Tigris", is a brilliant record of latter-day Mesopotamia and the... Read More

A sobering dispatch from a past marked by familiar prejudices, "The Trials of Madame Restell" is Nicholas L. Syrett’s consequential biography of a woman who defied changing norms to protect women’s health. Ann Trow—later known as... Read More