Book Reviews

Summer Dog Days–Time for Streaming & Reading August 2023 All Things Italy
Dear Friends: Since returning from Italy last month, I’ve hunkered down in Missouri. On a neighborhood walk this week, I saw some local grapes fattening...

A Sicilian Memoir: Simeti’s On Persephone’s Island
Mandarins and pears at an open market in Sicily. Photo: Andrew Malone , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr Mary Taylor Simeti’s memoir of...

A Privileged Perspective: On Escaping A Stricken Field
Cover of 1940 edition of Martha Gellhorn's A Stricken Field In January, reading Anne Boyd Rioux’s review essay of Martha Gellhorn’s...

A Valentine’s and Presidents’ Day Book: Precious and Adored
Cover of Laskey and Ehrenhalt's book, Precious and Adored Here's a book suited for both Valentine's and Presidents' Day. No, it's...

Timothy Miller on Communes in America, 1975-2000
For anyone interested in alternative communities in the US, Tim Miller's book on the last quarter of the 20th century is a thorough and accessible...

Mark Sundeen, The Unsettlers & The Good Life
Mark Sundeen's book, The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America Mark Sundeen's The Unsettlers: In Search of the...

An American Woman in 19th-Century Palestine
Occasionally I read a not-recently-published book that moves me so that I wonder how I missed it when it first appeared. ...

Transitions in Gender and Spirituality: Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka
In the spring of 1962, within a month of my birth and just before his death, Lobzang Jivaka finished composing his spiritual autobiography in India....