Native Mississippians are proud to proclaim that they are wedded to the land. The narrator of this fictionalized account of growing up in this Deep South state in the 1950s makes that fact perfectly clear in the first chapter. He... Read More

Losing a family member can be a traumatic event. The author was devastated after losing two sons to needless traffic accidents and then a wife to illness. In 1984, at the age of sixty-three, Smith’s therapy was to embark on a mammoth... Read More

Like the azure waters of the Aegean, this cookbook invites readers to dive in. When they do they’ll find refreshment and restoration. The author revitalizes readers with whole-hearted passion and unceasing hospitality through the Greek... Read More

This book examines Western thoughts on mortality through the development of opera, from the art’s birth at a time of religious zeal, through its growth during the age of reason, to the present, when belief in the afterlife has eroded,... Read More

This brilliantly developed biography depicts the life of a virtually forgotten scientist who exemplified practical solutions in an age of philosophical diversions. He was responsible for insights and practices that made him famous and... Read More

To pigeonhole this book as a “baseball memoir” is equivalent to calling Izaak Walton’s The Complete Angler a tract on fishing. Both books far exceed the subject matter indicated by their titles, though clearly the national... Read More

William III’s 1690 Act “for encouraging the distilling of brandy and spirits” was designed to boost the grain market and benefit farmers. Unfortunately, it led to a half-century of excessive gin consumption. Samuel Johnson noted... Read More

“Many unsuspecting passers-by had to relinquish molars before their ruler’s lust for surgery was satisfied,” the author writes of Peter the Great’s obsession with removing and collecting teeth. He adds that the “teeth in the... Read More