A fascinating history of the nineteenth-century frenzy surrounding an exotic flower, "The Lost Orchid" is about Victorian imperialism, ecological devastation, and climate change. The “Queen of the Orchids” is rare and beautiful, with... Read More

Cecily Gilligan’s sweeping encyclopedia "Cures of Ireland" archives centuries of Irish folk medicine, herbalism, and healing charms. Drawing on firsthand interviews and archival research, this expansive book details hundreds of Irish... Read More

Natalie Lawrence’s work of cultural inquiry, "Enchanted Creatures", analyzes fabled and mythical beasts across human history, folklore, and literature, asking why monsters persist in human imaginations. Organized into sections on... Read More

Two women, their lives separated by a century, learn the meaning of standing witness to horrific injustice in Roohi Choudhry’s epic historical novel "Outside Women". In 1890s India, after the British abolish slavery in their colonies,... Read More

In Gianni Rodari’s madcap allegorical fairy tale "Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto", an Italian nonagenarian’s villa is besieged by unwelcome guests. Baron Lamberto is plagued by twenty-four sicknesses, including arteriosclerosis and... Read More

"Subjugate the Earth" is Philipp Blom’s insightful, timely, and ambitious survey of the history of ideas related to humanity’s domination of nature. Rigorous and comprehensive, the book examines a range of philosophical ideas related... Read More

La June Montgomery Tabron’s memoir-cum-guidebook for combating racism through racial healing, "How We Heal", is focused on honest guided conversations between community members and addressing problems as a collective. Tabron grew up in... Read More

Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees’s "The Last Stand of the Raven Clan" is an engrossing history of the Tlingit-Russian war, its causes, and its impacts on North America. Written from the perspective of the Tlingit, this refreshing... Read More