Medieval Europe isn’t recognized for being particularly adventurous in spiritual matters. Dank monasteries, cavernous cathedrals, and plague pandemics seemed to stoicize the mind—though not in the case of Johannes Eckhart, a... Read More

Ablaze in infamy and otherworldly as any heavenly planet, Texas is mythology come alive. This singular place is what happens when fiercely independent, prone-to-violence people are assimilated into a fledgling nation whose capital is so... Read More

With the confidence that Mexico’s respect for people of retirement age would ferry him safely through the dangers hinted at by the state department, Paul Theroux set out to drive across Mexico, a trip recorded in "On the Plain of... Read More

In Mark Guerin’s "You Can See More from up Here", a nineteen-year-old and his father face up to a conflict of generational ideologies when a workplace incident sends reverberations through their small town. In 1974 in Belford,... Read More

Six giant pigs, four kids, and a gang of adults on a magical island maintain a tenuous balance of power until two castaways show up in Johanna Stoberock’s probing literary novel, "Pigs". Every day, Luisa, Andrew, Mimi, and Natasha feed... Read More

In Peter Robertson’s "Conclusion", healthy individuals can be scanned and “welded” to enjoy a guaranteed, healthy twenty more years of life. The catch is that they will die, or conclude, at the end of those two decades. Colin and... Read More

The varied work of a Japanese manga artist-turned-painter is reproduced in the beautiful full-color book "The Art of Baron Yoshimoto". Yoshimoto’s career in manga began in 1959, and he made a name for himself in that field during the... Read More

Thorpe Moeckel’s essay collection "Down by the Eno, Down by the Haw" captures the beauty of the land near two rivers. The naturalist’s month-by-month account of the year he lived on the watershed of two North Carolina rivers, the Eno... Read More