Arguing that pirates did more than lawlessly pillage the high seas, Rebecca Simon’s fascinating book The Pirates’ Code reveals their rules of engagement—and the steep consequences of eschewing these. There were heavy implications... Read More

Laura Yares’s "Jewish Sunday Schools" is a complex survey of Jewish immigrant religious education that notes its influence on society. The book details the concerns of early nineteenth-century Jewish American communities regarding the... Read More

The symbolism of the Soviet space program is examined in Cathleen S. Lewis’s cultural history "Cosmonaut". On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to enter space. Though brief, Gagarin’s venture outside of... Read More

In Rosemary Hennessy’s immersive book, seven singular authors are analyzed in terms of their unconventional lives and literary works. Drawing social crisis parallels between the 2020s and the Great Depression, this book unearths the... Read More

In his political science book "The Great Flip", Donald J. Fraser explores the history and origins of modern American political positions. Noting that it is now taken for granted that conservatives oppose “big government” while... Read More

Nuanced and complex, "Twilight of the Godlings" is Francis Young’s history of pagan deities and supernatural creatures in Britain, where ancient British, ancient Roman, and medieval Christian beliefs melded and took on numerous forms.... Read More

With insights into the lasting effects of wars on those who fight them, the memoir "Cong Catchers" is a veteran’s account of his experiences in Vietnam. Lee Halverson’s memoir "Cong Catchers" recalls his service as a military police... Read More

Drawing on his letters home, "Searching for Charles" vivifies a nineteenth-century English immigrant’s new life on the Illinois prairie. Stephen Watts’s family biography "Searching for Charles" makes use of an ancestor’s... Read More