Mark Twain famously spent his later years writing his autobiography, which per his instructions was published a full century after his death, but he always spun stories about his life with varying degrees of accuracy. In the lengthy and... Read More

On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers and delivered a powerful address that proved to be his last. In the excellent Redemption: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last 31 Hours,... Read More

Agnes Martin got a late start in her art career, struggled with relationships at a time when she couldn’t live openly, dealt with mental illness, and still became an important figure in the art world where her work was a bridge between... Read More

Sea otters are impossibly adorable furballs, whose pup-parenting, shell-cracking antics make them ecotourism and aquarium superstars. Todd McLeish’s "Return of the Sea Otter" gives a more rounded portrait of these apex predators (males... Read More

Richard Bruns’s "I, a Squealer" promises an insider’s account of the “Pied Piper of Tucson” murders. As intriguing as this narrative is, the more compelling story lurks within the relationship between the “squealer” and the... Read More

Norwegian journalists Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter deliver a true story that reads like a spy novel, peppered with scary organized crime villains, charismatic environmental activists and Interpol agents, and enough tidbits about... Read More

"Wildfire" brings equal measures of science and drama to the issue of combating ever larger, more intense wildland fires. Author Heather Hansen spent eighteen months immersed in fire science and policy, shadowing the elite firefighters... Read More

"Tales from an Uncertain World" by geologist and science educator L. S. Gardiner details various natural disasters, laced through with scientific explanations, elements of a memoir, and artful prose. It thoughtfully, sometimes... Read More