The sheer number of lists that are featured in popular magazines and websites speaks to a cultural fascination with the enumeration (and often, qualification) of all sorts of things—twenty ways to balance your budget, the top ten... Read More

Jim Northrup is the most insightful and humorous person on the Fond du Lac reservation in northern Minnesota. And Fond du Lac is to Northrup what Lake Wobegon is to Garrison Keillor or Yoknapatawpha County was to William Faulkner. Fond... Read More

If judged solely as a work of history, Marge Rieder’s biography of the seventeenth-century Swedish Queen Christina easily merits four stars. However, the author’s use of past-life regression hypnosis upon a thirty-two-year-old... Read More

As a labor of love, Lincoln’s Story: The Wayfarer is worthy of five stars. As a work of literature, however, it rates much lower. While the passion and admiration the author feels for Abraham Lincoln—the man and the president—is... Read More

The luxury-goods market is a distinct segment of the consumer market with an aura all its own. Most closely associated with fashion, luxury goods tend to remain popular even in a down economy because of their timeless appeal to the... Read More

Predators lurking in the fields and back alleys of childhood, along with the injustices of maturing in an imperfect world, may not rank high on most readers’ preferred entertainment list. But the social contribution of works such as... Read More

There are men who learn at a very young age to travel the safest path—do what your parents wish for you, never try to be better than you think you are. Jack Landry isn’t that kind of man. Instead, he reaches far and high for the... Read More

The recent memories of many Americans are seared with images of a devastated, storm-and-flood-ravaged, and desperately savage New Orleans. In the wake of these unforgettable pictures, however, most Americans moved on with their... Read More