UK environmentalist Natalie Fee’s engaging and witty "How to Save the World for Free" is about environmentalism via small, personal acts. The book’s twelve chapters each focus on one area where individuals can take little steps to... Read More

An earthquake didn’t hit San Francisco in 1978, but by all other accounts it was an earth-shaking year. The city was wracked by political assassination, the arrival of punk rock, and an unlikely resurgence from the Giants baseball... Read More

A refugia is a place where organisms can survive because they are protected in some way from the surrounding inhospitable environment; climate change has rendered the earth one such “flaming wreck.” Quietly political, the book’s... Read More

Born in 1859 into wealth and political power—his father was a Supreme Court justice; he served in Congress—George Shiras III’s long life spanned the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal. James H. McCommons’s engaging... Read More

In Anthony Varallo’s evocative and taut "The Lines", the end of a marriage brings about an unsettling beginning for a family. Set during the 1970s and amid oil and gasoline shortages, the US’s scarcity of fuel and the public’s... Read More

The characters of Arthur Allen’s "The Nurseryman" follow the trail of Martin Frobisher, explorer of the great North, who “discovered” Meta Incognita, now part of Baffin Island. Written in sixteenth-century style, the book’s... Read More

Charlie Gilkey’s "Start Finishing" addresses productivity problems and provides transformative solutions. Most people are busy all day long, yet nothing ever seems to get done and no one seems fulfilled. In "Start Finishing",... Read More

One might assume that training brains towards perfection is a worthy goal, but German neuroscientist Henning Beck’s "Scatterbrain" promotes a different perspective. The book refutes received opinions about the brain’s apparent... Read More