In 1990, the author, an American who was once a Buddhist monk with spiritual roots in Burma, clandestinely re-enters that country while its regime is holding its people hostage, sealing the borders and exterminating the rural population.... Read More

In the first years of the last century, a physician writing about reproduction lamented, “By that damnable sin-the avoidance of offspring-our women are no longer compelled to stay at home. Now woman has weaned herself from the... Read More

Norman Mailer once wrote about the “nobility” of the baser forms of speech. The author, in this engaging memoir of wanderlust, demonstrates how it works: “Before the sun reaches the horizon it is absorbed by a thick brown haze that... Read More

“She is no copyist of another’s skill: she has now a name for herself—she is one of our national glories—our Sedgwick.” So claimed Mrs. E. C. Embury in The Ladies Companion of 1835. During a career that spanned five decades of... Read More

This book ought to carry a warning on its cover: “Mothers of Small Children Should Approach With Extreme Caution.” The author’s wrenching first-person account of trying to rescue her young daughter and son from their powerful,... Read More

“It has been said that more has been written about Wagner than any man who ever lived, except for Jesus and Napoleon,” writes the author. Richard Wagner was a high note in nineteenth-century music, combining personal magnetism, lofty... Read More

In Colonial South Carolina, the settlement of Fount Royal awaits the arrival of a magistrate from Charles Town who will decide the fate of an accused witch, Rachel Howarth. The year is 1699, and settlements on the edge of the wilderness... Read More

Though the media goes to town on each new drink or drug craze as though it were unique in human history, large-scale destructive binges are nothing new, and neither is governmental response via largely unworkable and often... Read More