Since umbrellas normally are not difficult to operate, they seldom come with instruction booklets. This "Umbrella", however, could well use a warning: Notice—what follows is not your usual novel. There are 448 pages with no chapter... Read More

Helena Goscilo, Chair and Professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures at Ohio State University, has edited a remarkably satiating, intelligent anthology featuring short stories by twenty-three of... Read More

Ben Miller’s "River Bend Chronicle" contains 472 pages of circuitous, dense, and nonchronological essays harboring geodes of insight carried along by a cast of characters ranging from riotous to pitiful. Framing this autobiographical... Read More

When it comes to the cultural revolution of the ’60s and ‘70s, the hippies get the lion’s share of attention. However, it was the Beat Generation of the ’50s that actually pioneered the drug and sex culture that later grew into... Read More

Although the seven chakras are now accepted concepts among yoga practitioners and those who study and engage in meditative or other “alternative” spiritual practices, they were exotic when C. W. Leadbeater set pen to paper in the... Read More

“Influences are of course not simply a list of books read, but, as the word suggests a flowing into. It might be a rambling, a series of confluences.” In his contribution to this anthology, Greg Hewett further suggests that if the... Read More

There is nothing forgiving in the landscape of "The Thief of Auschwitz", yet Jon Clinch renders a portrait that is at once redemptive and enduring. One might wonder what more could be said about one of the most brutal moments in... Read More

"Mental Disability and the Death Penalty", by Michael L. Perlin, is an impressive, first-of-its-kind offering. Perlin states the impetus for his research in the book’s introduction: “There is no question that the death penalty is... Read More