Reporter Jen Stout’s "Night Train to Odesa" is a heartbreaking memoir about the Ukrainian people’s fight to survive a relentless war. Offered a journalism scholarship in Moscow, Stout arrived in Russia during Putin’s regime. When... Read More

Franz Nicolay’s riveting book "Band People" is a behind-the-scenes investigation into the internal dynamics of rock bands. Nicolay notes that documentary The Beatles: Get Back was an eye-opener to many because it revealed what he and... Read More

Scholar Jordan D. Rosenblum’s fascinating text "Forbidden" is a history of how the pig became the litmus test for Jewish identity. In accordance with biblical dietary laws, the pig is only one non-kosher animal out of many. Still, it... Read More

Tim Allis’s fascinating biography of American fashion and retail pioneer Henri Bendel, inventor of the clearance sale, asserts that much of what is taken for granted in modern retail can be attributed to Bendel, whose in-store fashion... Read More

The fictions that underlie racism and how they affect the way Americans perceive reality are dissected in Sarah Lewis’s eye-opening history text, "The Unseen Truth". In his 1861 speech “Pictures and Progress,” Frederick Douglass... Read More

Love overcomes racial and religious barriers in Mary Glickman’s historical novel Ain’t No Grave, set against the backdrop of the lynching of Leo Frank and the founding of the Anti-Defamation League. Max and Ruby are friends and... Read More

The island of Cyprus is centered in Alex Christofi’s eye-opening historical exposé "Cypria". Situated in the eastern corner of the Mediterranean, Cyprus is located at several crossroads: the European, Asian, and African tectonic... Read More

Toxic sisterhood leads to Viking-inspired ritual murder in Johana Gustawsson’s gothic-infused Scandinavian novel "Yule Island". Karl, a police inspector, arrives at a crime scene where a girl has been found dead with her body covered... Read More