Cat Stevens is known for several things, among them anthems such as “Wild World,” “Morning Has Broken,” and “Peace Train.” Those songs, he writes, came to him after a shattered first career as a pop singer, which left him “all burned out at the age of nineteen, after only sixteen months: show business had done […]
This an exploration of why the “crackin’ breakin’ shakin’ sounds,” as the Minnesota bard once termed them, are as important to his persona as the lyrics that most critics—and fans—focus on. Making well-argued points that sometimes get lost in academic prose, Rings, an associate music professor at the University of Chicago, breaks down the various […]
To be a cat owner is to spend innumerable hours entranced by the things your cats do. The author, a prolific documenter of her cats both in photographs and in verse, knows this all too well. “I have a camera that’s inside my eye,” begins one poem. “My little babies are always posing for me. […]
Keira is attending a prestigious museum summer program at Camp 43 in the small Canadian town of Westonville. Her winning project and the focus of her summer involves solving the murder of Erich Stein, a German POW from World War II who was held at the camp. When Keira meets her fellow participants, she feels […]
Readers first meet the four Heppenheimer cousins in Frankfurt in 1930, where they have gathered for their grandmother’s funeral. Gertrude, the youngest, is just 10 years old, and she’s excited because she’ll get to see her father, Robert—a rare occurrence since he moved to Strasbourg three years ago, after he and Gertrude’s mother, who’s Lutheran, […]
On a family holiday in Kent, England, the meticulously organized August and her husband, Andrew, visit Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewery, for a tasting tour. August is suddenly transported to an alternate timeline when the historic beer, called Five Bees, was first brewed. Waking up naked and confused, August stumbles to a doorstep, guided by […]
In this deeply personal yet socially illuminating memoir, Maxfield navigates her Jewish American experience, tracing the tension between assimilation and exclusion. She writes: “Here’s what happens when you’re Ashkenazi Jewish. You get put in the ‘White’ box because of the color of your skin. But the self-described ‘real’ white people, the so-called ‘fringe’ groups, don’t […]
Campbell candidly shares his experiences raising three children alongside his wife, Linda. Their oldest daughter, Alana, was born at an alternative birth center with no complications. Three years later, their second daughter, Kathryn, was also born without any trouble—only to be diagnosed with viral myocarditis (a life-threatening infection that attacks the heart) at just 10 […]
In this memoir that highlights the challenges and rewards of training at an older age, the author emphasizes throughout that perseverance and adaptability are essential to progress. Here, Weiss looks back on his eventful athletic journey: from tentative first races—including an early, stinging DNF (Did Not Finish) that fueled his later determination—to completing a half-marathon […]
In the early 20th century, Frona grows up as the responsible oldest daughter in a hardworking family, troubled by her many appetites and guilty about the reproving looks she thinks are given to her by the family icon of Mary and Jesus. Betrothed at 14, she moves at 18 to a new village with the […]