While some bars in Chicago have served Jeppson’s Malört for nearly a century, in the past two decades, the bitter, wormwood-derived botanical spirit found new life as both a niche favorite and an ironic countercultural drink. That... Read More

In Michael Weingrad’s slim, nostalgic literary novel "Eugene Nadelman", a nerdy Jewish boy comes of age in 1980s Philadelphia. Eugene shares his first name, and the book its format, with Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene... Read More

Sneed B. Collard III took up birdwatching in his adulthood, when his son developed an interest in birds. He records his own experiences and shares plenty of tips for fellow late bloomers in "Birding for Boomers", extolling the variety of... Read More

Christophe Lebold’s biography of one of popular music’s greatest songwriters is outstanding, grounding its subject in the historical times that formed him and his art. Following Leonard Cohen from his childhood in Canada through to... Read More

In Let’s Get Festive! Joanna Konczak tells the stories of more than thirty holiday celebrations around the world. Packed with interesting trivia, the book is an engaging roundup of the myriad ways that people celebrate. The holidays... Read More

A gentle conservation message comes through in Tom Huddleston’s adventure-filled novel Cosmic Creatures: The Friendly Firecat, wherein a girl visits her aunt on a remote planet—and has to stop intergalactic rustlers from stealing... Read More

As the senior White House correspondent for the nonpartisan Voice of America news network, Steven L Herman had the difficult assignment of covering the Donald Trump administration while it routinely attacked VOA for its commitment to the... Read More

In the funny and harrowing short stories of Joan Leegant’s excellent collection Displaced Persons, characters navigate myriad forms of displacement, from putting a new life together after divorce to finding their place in an adopted... Read More