Ten people drown every day in the US, one hundred around the world. Humans, the evidence shows, are not natural born swimmers. But swim we do. It’s the second most popular form of exercise in this country, behind walking. "Why We Swim"... Read More

Silent and stationary, mired in dirt: such is life of plants. Not the most appropriate station for the entity primarily responsible for sustaining life on Earth. But humility reigns in the plant world, while we humans shovel on ever more... Read More

By hook or by crook, the Indigenous people living on the land now occupied by the United States lost ownership rights to their property over the course of centuries. Many were murdered; others were tricked. And, yes, a rare few sold... Read More

Taras Grescoe’s artful and detailed "Possess the Air" draws on letters, memoirs, and secondary sources to chronicle twenty years of resistance to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Set in Mussolini’s Rome, which lives and breathes... Read More

On Mother’s Day in 1942, a corner shop in Occupied Paris became the site of a memorable protest. At a time when collaborationist, government-enforced rationing and hunger were rampant, an organized group of women stormed that shop, and... Read More

Michael Lanning’s "The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson" reveals that, more than ten years before Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus, a young black army officer also defied such an order. For taking that stand and... Read More

John Hemming’s "People of the Rainforest" is the intense, enlightening story of the three Villas Boas brothers, whose commitment to justice within Brazil’s Amazon led to vast expanses of that land being preserved for Indigenous... Read More

France’s Louis XIV, known as “The Sun King,” has long been an enigma. On the one hand, he was visionary, practical, and probably the greatest patron of the arts the world has ever known. On the other, he was ruthless, vain,... Read More