If so great a physicist as Richard Feynman once claimed that “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” what hope do we laypeople have? Luckily, Philip Ball, a freelance writer (formerly of Nature magazine) who has published widely on... Read More

After a successful career as an academic and historian, Nell Painter decided to go to art school. For Painter, art equates to pleasure, and the pleasure is visceral—it frees and connects mind and body in a way she couldn’t find... Read More

Don’t Believe It is a highly topical thriller, a work of pitched intrigue that follows a documentary filmmaker and crusading journalist, Sidney Ryan, who has exonerated several inmates convicted of murder. Sidney agrees to take up the... Read More

Obsessed with the rate of sea-level rise, environmental writer Elizabeth Rush traveled extensively along the US coasts and as far afield as Bangladesh, interviewing concerned scientists and coastal dwellers directly affected by... Read More

Outstanding dialogue and realistic characters illuminate a convincing mystery in Edward J. Delaney’s "Follow the Sun". In coastal New England, tradition-hardened men are up against the sea, a dwindling supply of lobster, and the... Read More

"Welcome to Lagos", Chibundu Onuzo’s US debut, follows an unlikely group of Nigerians bound together by circumstance. As their lives converge, five travelers from the Niger Delta are thrown together with two of Nigeria’s privileged... Read More

In Michelle de Kretser’s "The Life to Come", lives intersect, entwine, or separate within distinct yet unified passages. The general nexus being Australia, backdrops shift from Sydney to Paris or Sri Lanka, from the present to the... Read More

Karen Karbo’s "In Praise of Difficult Women" collects twenty-nine biographical profiles of women who have pushed back, broken the mold, or simply lived on their own terms. The women chosen are eclectic, while the narrative is... Read More