A powerful storm shatters the happiness that Jon and his father share in their little cottage by the sea. The father’s boat is capsized by a huge wave and, while he survives physically, his spirit sinks into the depths of the sea. The... Read More

The Acoustic Guitar is an ambitious coffee-table book. It charts the evolution of the acoustic guitar from origins in the sixteenth century to the present time. There is a wealth of information here for the novice, containing at least a... Read More

A central question posed by Ralph Waldo Emerson throughout his life was “How shall I live?” So argues Gustaaf Van Cromphout, Professor of English at Northern Illinois University, who points out in this important study that,... Read More

Mary Mable Rogers?… Even her name is unmemorable, more readily evoking a prim spinster than a nubile femme fatale. But at the turn of the century… Mary was the last woman to be hanged in the state of Vermont. And weirder still—she... Read More

“I guess even bad television can be a force for good in the world,” Finkie Finklestein muses at the end of Kashner’s fine first novel about a man who idolizes Frank Sinatra. It is the kind of quirky idea that makes the book fun to... Read More

In his recent bestseller, Shadows in the Sun, ethnobiologist Wade Davis includes an unsettling theory from Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Wilson asserts that this past century will be remembered not for its wars or technological... Read More

Skylark is the story of a time—the time when men first took to the sky after the Wright Brothers showed that it was, indeed, a possibility. And Skylark is the story of a man—named Harry Nelson Atwood who came into his own during... Read More

Sarah May has outgrown her dress and needs a new one. In her heart she longs for a red one, but her practical parents decide on a serviceable blue one; big enough to grow into and dark enough to hide dirt. While stoically accepting the... Read More