Henning Mankell is best known as a crime writer. "The Shadow Girls" is a novel about a different sort of crime: the treatment of desperate immigrants in the country where they hoped to find safety and freedom. Tea-Bag, from Nigeria,... Read More

Poet, essayist, literary historian, and educator, George Venn is a recognized figure in Western US literature. His works have won numerous awards, and his third book, Marking the Magic Circle, published in 1988, was honored by the Oregon... Read More

As many as 90 percent of us will experience at least one serious traumatic event during our lives, report Stephen Southwick and Dennis Charney in Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges. These can range from... Read More

"Centerville", a quiet novel by Karen Osborn, begins with a terrific bang, the shockwaves from which touch every part of the story until the very end. On an idyllic Saturday afternoon in 1967 in this pleasant Midwestern town, the lives... Read More

In his popular and enduring A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn offers a very different account of American history than the one that generations of schoolchildren have been taught. Rather than focusing on the elite... Read More

The vital Buddhist Heart Sutra is a slight two-page text, but it somehow encapsulates a vast storehouse of wisdom and guidance. Despite its brevity, the principles have proven to be impenetrable to many. In an accessible and charming... Read More

Tracing gin’s history back to ancient times, Richard Barnett launches this intoxicating, astringent tale with an exploration of the age-old culinary and religious associations of its primary flavoring, juniper. Burned during... Read More

A bleak postrecession landscape has diverted attention from the possibilities inherent in progressivism. Not merely a simplistic manifesto but a clarion call for democratic engagement, Ivey’s "Handmaking America" provides ample... Read More