David K. Johnson’s "Buying Gay" is a compelling retrospective of physique magazines, which provided gay men with an outlet in the 1950s and 1960s. The “Physique Era” encompasses the rise and fall of physique magazines from 1951 to... Read More

Nationalism and patriotism are not unfamiliar substances in America’s bloodstream. As Peter Martin’s "The Dictionary Wars" illustrates, such fervor extended into heated debates over English language usage. In its infancy, the United... Read More

The earth provides us with the resources we need to stay alive. Unfortunately, making use of those resources usually involves doing damage—to the animals we sacrifice for food and clothing, and through the environmental degradation we... Read More

Kathleen Sprows Cummings’s thorough and spirited "A Saint of Our Own" looks at the Catholic community in the United States and its desire for an American saint. Well-researched in historical and religious context, the book conveys the... Read More

In 2016, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy defined Appalachia for many, with Vance lionized as the region’s latter-day prophet. For Appalachians, the book has been much more troubling and complex. "Appalachian Reckoning", edited by... Read More

Iran from Crowns to Turbans is a dynamite book about one foreigner’s privileged look at earthshaking events that still impact the world today. Gail Rose Thompson’s "Iran from Crown to Turbans" is an incisive look at Iran during the... Read More

Do they exist? What are they hiding from? Did one of those little suckers take my beloved stuffed teddy bear when I was three? These are the burning elf and dwarf questions keeping wanna-believers up at night, especially in parts of... Read More

In "Hermanas", Natalia Kohn, Noemi Vega Quiñones, and Kristy Garza Robinson construct a lighthouse with love, built on the examples of biblical women as well as each author’s personal experiences, to draw their Christian Latina... Read More