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

Crawford Gribben’s sweeping history surveys Ireland’s grand past—and its importance for Western Christianity. Here, religion is presented as a moving force within Irish history, which is divided into five key movements: conversion,... Read More

In "The Contagion Next Time", Sandro Galea calls for improving public health—including the public’s understanding of public health—following the revelations brought about by Covid-19. The book’s overriding question is of how to... Read More

“Planets are born from the chaos of countless collisions,” Simone Marchi writes in "Colliding Worlds", which cites everything from lunar craters to gold seams as evidence of interplanetary impacts. Space rocks have not existed from... Read More

Discussions about, and popular understandings of, American Jews often belie the true diversity of the US’s community, as is evinced in "Once We Were Slaves". Laura Arnold Leibman’s biography traces a preeminent American Jewish family... Read More

Tom Nichols examines the current state and possible future of liberal democracy in "Our Own Worst Enemy". In decades past, Nichols says, democratic nations had to protect themselves from external, physical threats. But countries around... Read More

Blake Scott Ball charts the impact of the classic comic strip Peanuts on American culture, and vice versa, in Charlie Brown’s America. Peanuts is a cultural icon, but even with its sly humor inspired by changes in society, such as... Read More

Ira Nadel’s Philip Roth: A Counterlife is an intense and illuminating study of the life, times, and work of the Jewish man from Newark who became one of America’s most original and provocative writers. Nadel brings meticulous... Read More