Sitting down and enjoying a good, tight essay, we can confidently say, is an acquired taste. Moreover, essays are terribly difficult to write, and publishers will tell you essay collections are second only to poetry in sales ineptitude.... Read More

Little did we know that Ohio University Press has a series of books on race, ethnicity, and gender in Appalachia. The latest, "Shake Terribly the Earth", is a tightly connected collection of essays from Sarah Beth Childers’s rural,... Read More

To understand Julian Hoffman’s goals in "The Small Heart of Things", you must consider two ideas from his preface: 1) “Awareness is becoming acquainted with environment, no matter where one happens to be,” in the words of Sigurd... Read More

Sara Elinoff Acker has been studying relationships, albeit the violent type. In "Unclenching Our Fists", she explores a litany of depressing questions, beginning with why some men become abusive and leading to the eyes-wide-open... Read More

Knowing what we now know about our imitative impulses, we can venture forward to the realm of culture, comfortable with the idea that to live in a place is unavoidably to live out the hopes and dreams of that place. Consider "The Glass... Read More

Picture yourself in the early twentieth century, fully alive and engaged with the modernist movement’s flowering in the arts, literature, and psychology. Here’s the catch: imagine that the Father of Modernism, Sigmund Freud, didn’t... Read More

Sometimes the ability to connect with others must be developed through specific exercises. When autistic children engage in play therapy, for example, their verbal and social skills improve dramatically. "Teaching Social Skills to People... Read More

Celebrated osteopathic physician and homeopath, Maud Nerman, DO, has “discovered a magic pill that will help you heal. It is your commitment to your own healing.” For those dealing with daily, long-term pain issues and traumatic... Read More