A neighborhood in the East Bronx is the subject of "Parkchester", a fascinating study by former Parkchesterite Jeffrey S. Gurock. Built by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1940, Parkchester at first served as an idyllic alternative... Read More

Camden is an anthropomorphized cat attending high school. He grapples with his sexuality and how to reveal it to his best friend in Jon Allen’s graphic novel "The Lonesome Era". Camden inhabits a late-1990s American Rust Belt town that... Read More

Judy Mundle was astounded when a Japanese American work colleague—rendered here as Janet Hayashi—confided that she had been a block manager at an American internment camp during World War II. In this poignant memoir, she reveals the... Read More

The Friendship Key is a compelling self-help book that focuses on the central importance of friendship. Making friends as an adult can be quite challenging, but in his book The Friendship Key, Winfried Sedhoff makes the case that... Read More

Jacques Schiffrin was an influential publisher in Paris at the outbreak of World War II, but soon he had to flee the life he’d built and begin again in the United States. The story of his impressive rise, and of his unexpected second... Read More

Michelle Ann Abate’s "Funny Girls" is fascinating, focusing on an oft ignored component of Golden Age comics: preadolescent girl characters. It contextualizes and analyzes a number of wildly successful but academically ignored... Read More

Ultimately heartwarming despite its macabre circumstances, "No Straight Thing" is an engrossing historical mystery. In F. Nelson Smith’s character-driven novel, "No Straight Thing", a murder mystery connects a war veteran and a young... Read More

Margaret Hagerman’s "White Kids" brings to mind two words: must read. Many crucial race studies focus on the struggles of disenfranchised folks. But by centering her research on white children, Hagerman studies the kids who benefit... Read More