Philosopher Philip Goff’s new book "Why?" makes a succinct, ambitious case for a new, secular view of cosmic purpose. "Why?" opens with an ancient question: “What’s the point of living?” It then considers the vacuity of most... Read More

Martin Stevens’s "Secret Worlds" is a brilliant book on animal perception—the astonishing sensory adaptations that birds, insects, and other creatures evolved for their survival. Humans share five senses with animals; animals have... Read More

"Into the Bright Sunshine" is an incisive biography of Hubert Humphrey, the rural Midwesterner who grew into a prominent, persuasive politician in the vanguard of civil rights. Humphrey’s Great Depression-era childhood in South Dakota... Read More

"Serving Herself" is Ashley Brown’s impressive biography of Althea Gibson, a multifaceted trailblazer in sports. Gibson was a sports prodigy whose drive and career path bewildered her working-class family. She had to take side gigs to... Read More

Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale’s "The Zelensky Effect" is part biography of the charismatic president, part sociopolitical history of Ukraine from its 1991 independence to the recent Russian invasion—“more fundamentally about... Read More

One in four Americans belongs to no religion, the majority of those having been raised in, and having left, Christianity. In his engaging book "Nonverts", Stephen Bullivant unearths the stories behind these statistics and presents cogent... Read More

Paul Miller-Melamed examines the origins of World War I in his historical survey "Misfire". Popular history suggests that World War I began when a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June of 1914.... Read More