Denim pants have never been so interesting as in Lynn Downey’s new biography of the very man who birthed blue jeans. "Levi Strauss" is a fresh, in-depth, groundbreaking look... Read More

Dislocation, family strife, and the desire to escape the familiar are the driving forces in these stories mostly set in an arid landscape. In this prize-winning collection of... Read More

Although most Americans have some knowledge of the history of the civil and women’s rights movements, comparatively few possess awareness of the trials and tribulations and... Read More

The ten stories in Andrew Malan Milward’s "The Agriculture Hall of Fame" are set in “the center of the center of America”: Kansas. And they are all, in their own unique... Read More

The girls are, as the title states, in trouble. In this kaleidoscopic collection of thirteen short stories which won the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Benjamin Franklin... Read More

Howard Cosell was one of those personalities who was either loved or hated. Loud, smart, unattractive, and possessing a distinctive (and according to detractors, most grating)... Read More

Those who thought New England cuisine consisted of lobster rolls and baked beans will find Northern Hospitality: Cooking by the Book in New England as unexpected and refreshing... Read More

Self-assessments as frank and all-encompassing as “…she knows herself to be a woman afraid of engagement, of exposure, of experience, of change, of strangers, of... Read More

Reading the stories in Greg Mulcahy’s collection of short fiction, "Carbine", is like driving slowly by a smoldering auto–truck accident on I-10 just east of New Orleans. It... Read More

“Within a year after the nation’s political center had moved to Washington.” begins History of the Smithsonian, “when roads were still little more than paths through the... Read More

Thoreau’s two-year experiment “to live deliberately” on Walden Pond consecrated that body of water as America’s most famous literary landmark. To observe the... Read More

Upon her death in 1905, Mary A. Livermore was hailed by the Boston Transcript as “America’s foremost woman.” It was a fitting epitaph. During the Civil War, Livermore... Read More