The author opens the book with a series of devastating events that occurred to people in the author’s inner circle that made him realize that “life can be more than mere survival.” Survival mode, he writes, is an “emergency response system” that may manifest as irritability, procrastination, or simply becoming numb. By contrast, thriving is […]
Based on dozens of interviews and abundant archival sources, scholar and author Kaplan’s book offers a perceptive, sympathetic biography of activist, unabashed communist, and muckraker Jessica Mitford (1917-1996). Jessica, known as Decca, was defiant even as a child—unlike her sisters Nancy, who became a well-known novelist; Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity; Deborah, who married a […]
Montana in 1906 may not be quite as wild as in the recent past, but it’s certainly exciting enough for Lord Atherly, who’s fossil hunting and awaiting the arrival of his heir, Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst, and his wife, Stella, on the Ninebark Ranch owned by Ned Smith, the second husband of Stella’s mother. Stella and […]
Molly Dearborn and Karl Dean were high school friends who harbored crushes on each other. Nothing happened between them and then a big misunderstanding drove them apart, and they haven’t spoken in 22 years. Molly moved away and wound up married, while Karl stayed in their hometown of Harlot’s Bay, Maryland, and opened a bakery. […]
Emma Woodhouse Knightley has given up matchmaking for marriage and a peaceful life catering to the whims of her father, who imagines that sickness and death lurk around every corner. When Mr. Woodhouse announces that he’s marrying Miss Bates, it’s a major shock to Emma; her sister, Isabella; and their husbands, brothers George and John […]
“As a full-time evolutionary biologist, part-time botanist, recreational user, and more than likely a future medicinal user, I find cannabis one of the most fascinating of all plants on our planet,” writes DeSalle, a curator of molecular systematics at the American Museum of Natural History. It’s fascinating indeed: A flowering plant, cannabis is a distant […]
Chloe Fairway feels like things couldn’t get worse. At 31, she’s living with her parents in the London suburbs, working as an assistant rather than a screenwriter, and stuck in the dating trenches. But then an old colleague recommends a mysterious dating service called Perfect Partners. Chloe figures it can’t hurt to try, so she […]
Emma, depicted at the outset of the story as a polar bear cub, wakes one morning in her ice-cavern bedroom, her mother calling her to breakfast. Anticipating a feast of berries, seaweed, and fish, Emma sets out, following her nose up icy cliffs, down slippery slopes, across shimmering plains, and over jagged crevasses. Along the […]
Becky Alderton is nearly 30, and nothing in her life is going the way she’d always assumed it would. She’s single, perpetually going on terrible dates, and nursing an unrequited crush on her ex-boyfriend and current best friend, Max. She still lives with her mother, who actually gives her a curfew. Her job is a […]
The third memoir from Van Dyke covers similar ground as the previous two; now he is approaching 100 instead of 90, but before that, not much has changed. (That’s the thing about the past.) What’s new is the angle: the hundred chapters are titled for their takeaway: from “Don’t Act Your Age” and “Make Your […]