Raised in France by a single mother (who, per the author, reveled in manipulation and emotional abuse), at age 19 Ranucci put an ocean between them by moving to New York City. The New Age movement emerging at the time resonated with her own spiritual questions, feelings of interconnectedness, and hope for transformation and self-knowledge. […]
Etta Wheeler moved to Manhattan in 1873 with her husband, Charles, who had accepted a position as a journalist at The New York Daily News. Although married for nine years, the couple had no children. Etta, a devout Methodist, sought to make herself useful, and what happened next made her famous: On a missionary outing […]
O’Brien, author of The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, offers an exploration of grand strategy: decisions by a supreme authority for actions beyond the command of military forces. Readers will learn more from stand-alone biographies of the author’s five subjects, but he provides solid overviews of their decision-making processes. All maintained that they […]
Canines became a fixture in Leone’s life in 1994, when her then-6-year-old son, Jesse, made it clear he wanted a dog. The author and her husband bought him a bichon frise puppy named Goody, and they nicknamed him the “Prince of Dogs.” Twelve years later—and a few months after Jesse passed away in his sleep […]
As the story goes (related years later by a friend of the writer), once when Franz Kafka was walking in a Berlin park, he met a mother whose child, Saskia, was in tears. Learning that the child had lost her doll Christiana, he began bringing her postcards he’d gathered in his travels with notes from […]
Nina, who was introduced in the first book as a new addition to Ellie’s friend group, hasn’t gelled equally with all the pals and is stirring up drama. The venue where Ellie’s friend Charlie wanted to hold her bat mitzvah party closed, so she may not get to celebrate after the religious service. This leads […]
In 2016, in Cincinnati, voters overwhelmingly approved raising their taxes to fund city preschools, “with targeted resources for poor—mostly Black—communities.” Johns Hopkins political scientist Han took note, especially because the numbers were markedly different in the presidential election: Cincinnati went for Clinton by 10 points, but the voters approved the school initiative by 24, so […]
Boston-based jazz lover and alcoholic Elder Darrow owns a bar—the Esposito—but he’s been slowly losing his passion for the business, and the drinking is starting to catch up with him. When Elder’s best friend, Boston police detective Dan Burton, is gunned down in what appears to be a random liquor store robbery, Elder barely has […]
The political crisis culminating in the deposition of Richard II in 1399 by his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, ignited the issue of sovereign legitimacy between the houses of York and Lancaster for the next 85 years. In her probing work in four parts, with chapters titled after lines from the Shakespeare plays, Castor delves into […]
Mintz begins at a dark moment, when, soon after Lennon was killed, he is charged with inventorying the musician’s countless possessions: roomfuls of guitars, the attaché cases with which he was smitten, boxes of cassettes and their works in progress, granny glasses “in a rainbow of tinted colors.” He came into this responsibility circuitously. As […]