John Briscoe’s Crush: The Triumph of California Wine is a lively introduction to California’s wine industry. Though blessed with a superb climate and geography for cultivating grapes, California winemakers endured centuries of... Read More

Todd Richards’s Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes is a thoughtful introduction to African American food, though it is only the launching point for Richards’s inventive cooking repertoire. Chapters begin with base... Read More

Sheila Watt-Cloutier grew up in the Arctic. As a native Inuk, she witnessed numerous environmental dangers, not the least of which was climate change. In a candid, heartfelt memoir that concentrates on her lifelong activism,... Read More

Eugene Vodolazkin’s "The Aviator" is an unabashed, panoramic view of the landscape of human consciousness affected by time, place, faith, and faces. Innokenty Petrovich Platonov does not know who he is. Confined to a bed in a... Read More

This colorful and complex portrait of a 1950s Jewish family is warm and nostalgic, yet grounded by deep history. David Hirshberg’s My Mother’s Son centers on a vibrant postwar Boston neighborhood that is a veritable melting pot. Its... Read More