Christophe Lebold’s biography of one of popular music’s greatest songwriters is outstanding, grounding its subject in the historical times that formed him and his art. Following Leonard Cohen from his childhood in Canada through to... Read More

In Let’s Get Festive! Joanna Konczak tells the stories of more than thirty holiday celebrations around the world. Packed with interesting trivia, the book is an engaging roundup of the myriad ways that people celebrate. The holidays... Read More

A gentle conservation message comes through in Tom Huddleston’s adventure-filled novel Cosmic Creatures: The Friendly Firecat, wherein a girl visits her aunt on a remote planet—and has to stop intergalactic rustlers from stealing... Read More

As the senior White House correspondent for the nonpartisan Voice of America news network, Steven L Herman had the difficult assignment of covering the Donald Trump administration while it routinely attacked VOA for its commitment to the... Read More

In the funny and harrowing short stories of Joan Leegant’s excellent collection Displaced Persons, characters navigate myriad forms of displacement, from putting a new life together after divorce to finding their place in an adopted... Read More

During the final decades of the Soviet Union, the country’s Jewish population was stuck in an impossible situation, unable to practice their religion and also forbidden to leave. Shaul Kelner’s "A Cold War Exodus" shows how a... Read More

For those wondering why another book on Jerusalem is needed, Jodi Magness’s "Jerusalem through the Ages" provides an eloquent answer based in archaeology, from the biblical era through the crusades of the twelfth century. The book... Read More

In T. L. Simpson’s moving coming-of-age novel "Strong Like You", a high school student in Arkansas struggles to understand what happened to his missing father. When the book begins, Walker’s father is already gone without... Read More