Actor-turned-author McCarthy, now in his 60s, begins with a comment from a young son who says, offhandedly, “You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?” McCarthy thinks, well, he has friends, but he doesn’t see them often. The resolve, then, that drives this narrative was to go seek out friends from his hell-raising, bibulous […]
In her debut, art historian and podcaster Blackwell Baines explores the haunted-house phenomenon through eight homes—five in England, three in the U.S.—tracing how a loosely defined building type became a remarkably stable cultural symbol, a space that “subvert[s] our expectations of the house (or ‘home’) as a place of safety and privacy.” Each dwelling anchors […]
Prize-winning scholar Nussbaum argues that opera engages in political thought, conveying moral and philosophical ideas about rights and freedoms, gender, rank, and class. Beyond the libretti, these ideas are expressed in the music itself and in the act of singing. Nussbaum devotes half the book to Mozart, whom she sees as “the deepest philosopher of […]
When Meron’s native Poland was invaded in 1939, he writes in this impressive memoir, “Nazi Germany brought an apocalyptic change in my life: from sweet, uneventful, pampered childhood to the horrors of fleeing from monsters.” Seven years later, having fled those monsters, he arrived in Israel in 1946. “I was nearly 16 years old, with […]
God and Luc (the Devil) have waged war across seven battlefields for centuries. The final battlefield is the city of Carnage Coast, where God’s “champions” face off against Luc’s minions. Travis Holiday, known publicly as the armor-donning Iron Warrior, is one such champion. However, after enduring darkness in his own soul, he’s been largely absent […]
Seventeen-year-old Calico Brown’s 14-year-old sister, Asha, was being treated for cancer when she died. Calico made a hasty deal with an opportunistic man named Lucas Fates and persuades her mum to agree: The sisters will be cryogenically frozen in the hope that Asha can be reanimated when a cure has been found. Calico’s own freezing—assisting […]
“Jefferson survives.” These, it is said, were John Adams’ last words, as he died—as did Jefferson—on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document, write historians Onuf and Cogliano in this distillation of their popular seminar for schoolteachers, was heavily edited by a committee of the Continental […]
Solis and Dougherty aim their skillfully written and smartly designed primer at “experts who are writing—or exploring the idea of writing—a nonfiction book.” Whether the reader is an educator, consultant, academic, or simply someone with a wealth of knowledge and “something useful and important to say that will impact readers’ lives in a transformative way,” […]
Rosalind knows all too well what happens when patriarchs let their vanity spoil their stewardship of their families’ fortunes. Her own father’s disappearance left her nothing but a pile of bad debts. Although marrying Devon Winterbourne, son of the Duke of Casselmaine, would have secured her future, Rosalind chose the road less traveled, earning her […]
Hugo’s forgetfulness leads to lost belongings, overlooked responsibilities, and messed-up schedules. Not fun. Hugo suffers so much that he imagines a “sneaky little trickster” who might be behind it all, undermining him. Artistically inclined Hugo even provides a droll labelled portrait of the creature! We follow Hugo through his disasters: missing a soccer session with […]