In Tziporah Cohen’s "No Vacancy", an eleven-year-old leaves New York City after her parents buy a rundown motel upstate. At the Jewel Motor Inn, in New York’s Finger Lakes region, Miriam shares a grimy room, painted a color... Read More

The erudite, illustrated essays of "Dissimilar Similitudes" concern art, history, religion, and culture in late medieval Europe—in particular, how devotional objects and images were viewed by worshippers. Some challenge traditional... Read More

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s shimmering essay collection about fantastic creatures and plants, "World of Wonders", is shot through with memories of her peripatetic life and observations about race, motherhood, and environmental issues. Fumi... Read More

"Smells" is part scholarly treatise, part fascinating popular history, dashed through with a soupçon of wit. Historian Robert Muchembled’s abundant research led him to scour estate and shop inventories, manuscripts, illustrations, and... Read More

Nostalgia-fueled interest in retro music and contemporary artists’ expressions of “black resistance, joy, and togetherness” are at the heart of today’s soul music revival, and Emily J. Lordi’s nuanced revisionist history "The... Read More

Canadian architect Teresa Coady is renowned worldwide for her firm’s high-performance, energy-efficient buildings. In "Rebuilding Earth", she discusses myriad ways to reform the Industrial Age construction industry, which now crashes... Read More

Julian Hoffman’s "Irreplaceable" chronicles singular landscapes and the inspiring people who fight to protect them. It’s an eloquent, sustained prose poem about the beauty and historical, cultural, and ecological attributes of... Read More

It’s easy to feel anxious and overwhelmed about the accelerating impacts of climate change. Parents face even more angst about what kind of Anthropocene apocalypse lies ahead for their children. Harriet Shugarman’s How to Talk to... Read More