The Italian author, Italo Calvino (best known for his fantastical storytelling, particularly in The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a retelling of the Decameron), believed that half the books in one’s library should be books one has not... Read More

“Everyone decided to play hide-and-seek. Nipper climbed into a big clam shell and pulled it shut.” Uh-oh. It seemed like a good idea, but things don’t always work out, especially for Nipper, the little crab who wants badly to be... Read More

Children are as certain of magic as they are of reality, and they crave to be heard and taken seriously. Many adults, in turn, crave to recapture that youthful, confident belief in magic. Both these cravings are fulfilled in this... Read More

Last year the United States recognized the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, “Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education,” a decision that declared segregation in U.S. schools unconstitutional. In academic... Read More

The “certain age” explored is middle life. The single woman is actually twenty-eight single women, writing about single-hood, motherhood, their bodies, their pasts, and—predominantly—about love. Whether the women are shunning it... Read More

The author had resided on Cape Cod for years in admiration of the famous nature writer John Hay, who lived up the hill from him. Despite Gessner’s previous publications—<I<Sick of Nature and Return of the Osprey, among... Read More

Few Baby Boomers who grew up lunching in public school cafeterias escaped ladles of an over-salted, brown glop known as chop suey. That meal passed as an introduction to “Asian” food, despite its dubious and controversial origins... Read More

Reader beware—do not dive into this book before a meal. While this is primarily a tale of strategic success, no story about Trader Joe’s, the gourmet shop for bargain hunters, can be told without liberal mention of its products, from... Read More