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Andy Jordan's Bookshelf
Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know
Amy Ved
Vibrant Publishers
https://www.vibrantpublishers.com
9781636516370, $66.49, HC, 276pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Public-Speaking-Essentials-Always-Wanted/dp/1636516378
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/public-speaking-essentials-you-always-wanted-to-know-ami-ved/1148331009
Synopsis: With the publication of "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" by Ami Ved (the LinkedIn Top Voice 2024) is a DIY instructional guide to transforming your voice and becoming a master public speaking with confidence, charisma, and persuasive impact.
"Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" is covers::
The Fundamentals of Public Speaking -- Building a solid foundation in structure, delivery, and audience connection.
Proven Preparation Methods -- Learning how to research, refine, and rehearse speeches that leave a lasting impression.
Audience Analysis Skills-- Understanding your listeners and adapt your content to resonate deeply.
Solutions to Common Speaking Challenges -- Overcoming fear, controlling nerves, and turning weaknesses into strengths.
Techniques to Elevate Your Presence -- Harnessing body language, vocal variety, storytelling, and persuasion to inspire action.
The Pathways to Professional Speaking -- Developing the skills and confidence to speak in any professional setting.
Of special note is tht "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" offers a structured approach to mastering the art of speaking confidently and effectively. Whether you are an executive, entrepreneur, or educator, "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" provides practical tools and techniques to help you connect with your audience and leave a lasting impression. It also covers everything from overcoming stage fright to perfecting your delivery.
With step-by-step strategies for structuring speeches, controlling your voice, and using body language, "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" is specifically designed for anyone looking to become a more persuasive and confident communicator.
Critique: Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of an exclusive interview with Mark Brown who provides unique insights into what it takes to excel in public speaking, "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" is exceptionally informative, thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, and an ideal DIY instructional guide to speaking at any and all occasions both formal and informal. While especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Public Communications collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Public Speaking Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" from Vibrant Publishers is also readily available in paperback (9781636516356, $38.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $36.99).
Editorial Note #1: Ami Ved (https://speakwithamee.com/about-ami) is a global coach helping professionals master communication and stage presence through her unique, proven methods
Editorial Note #2: Vibrant Publishers is focused on presenting the best texts for learning about technology and business as well as books for test preparation. Categories include programming, operating systems and other texts focused on IT. In addition, a series of books helps professionals in their own disciplines learn the business skills needed in their professional growth. Vibrant Publishers also has a standardized test preparation series covering the GMAT, GRE and SAT, providing ample study and practice material in a simple and well organized format, helping students get closer to their dream universities.
Andy Jordan
Reviewer
Ann Skea's Bookshelf
The Language-Lover's Lexipedia
Joshua Blackburn
Avid Reader Press
c/o Simon & Schuster
https://www.simonandschuster.com
9781668098844, $28.99, HB 240pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Lovers-Lexipedia-Z-Linguistic-Curiosities/dp/1668098849
The Language-Lover's Lexipedia: An A to Z of Linguistic Curiosities began as a quiz game invented by Joshua Blackburn to relieve the boredom of the Covid lockdown and to convince his sons that English 'is endlessly fascinating'. He called the game 'League of the Lexicon', and when he also began to play it with friends, it became 'something of an obsession' and ended up being launched on the internet and becoming one of Mensa America's 'Recommended Games'.
Now, in the book, Blackburn shares many of the rabbit holes that the game led him to explore. You can read it, he says,
From back to front to back if you wish. Or diagonally, obliquely, occasionally or carelessly. Every entry points to other entries, so after exploring one rabbit hole there's always another to dive down.
And the rabbit holes he leads you down range from 'Abracadabra' and 'Advertising Slogans in Latin' to 'Zyzziva': (a tropical beetle seemingly named by naturalists to 'bag the last spot in the dictionary' (OED 1971) before the Merriam-Webster's 'zyzzogeton' ousted it from this position.
Blackburn, like Rudyard Kipling's 'Elephant's Child', is clearly full of 'satiable curiosity', and he also has a fine sense of humour. So, Lexipedia is the sort of book where even random exploration prompts the reader to annoy those who happen to be sitting nearby (for me this is usually my long-suffering husband) by reading out curious and/or funny snippets. Such as this note under 'Thingammies':
The first thingammy was what-d'ye call 'em, which the Oxford English Doodad dates to 1473. People have been coming up with names for things they can't remember the names for ever since.
This is followed by a list of 44 thingammies, including 'doodad' and my new favourites 'whangdoodle' and 'tiddlypush', plus 'pointything' for the TV remote control.
Or, under 'Mountweazels', which were 'invented by the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary as a copyright trap for dictionary plagiarists', this example:
Jungtfax (n.)
A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing on the right side, and the female only one wing on the left side. (Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, 1943)
Opening the book at random one comes across 'Mudballs', 'Pen Names', 'Bee's Knees', 'Farts', 'Pig Latin', 'Ikea Product Naming', and 'Aussie Abbreviations' including 'barbie' (barbecue), 'garbo' (garbage collector), 'rego' (car registration) etc. Aussies send recyclable throw-outs to the 'Salvos' (Salvation Army) charity shop rather than leaving them for the garbos. This section is accompanied by a 'Barry Humphries Glossary' that 'readers of a sensitive disposition' are advised to skip 'for something more wholesome'.
There are strange and wonderful entries, each of which has subsections exploring meaning, usage and the odd facts that Blackburn obviously enjoyed and wanted to share, but there is serious information here, too, such as the history of the ampersand, and of hash-marks and emoticons.
There are also several pages devoted to 'Lexipedia People', one of whom, Anne Fisher (1719-1778) is of special note since she published the first simple book of grammar, which became a bestseller, and she was also 'a teacher, an author, an entrepreneur and an all-round remarkable woman'. Blackburn's note lists her many publishing accomplishments, her founding of a newspaper, the printing business she co-ran with her husband, and the girls' school she established and ran for four years. It ends with the dry comment that 'she also had nine children'.
The book ends with several appendices including a list of collective nouns for animals, a page about the composition of the English alphabet (not 'as straightforward as one might imagine'), plus some notes linked to earlier entries and a 'Library' of 'books for language lovers'.
Blackburn, as a 'writer, photographer and Maker of Things', clearly had a lot of fun exploring rabbit holes in the world of language and, as the flyer that came to me with this book rightly says, his Lexipedia is 'catnip for curious minds', especially if you want to become fluent in Scottish insults or learn to use Elizabethan colours like 'Ape's Laugh' and 'Lustie Gallant'.
Just writing this review has made me return to Lexipedia again and again, each time finding something more to enjoy. My only complaint is that this compact book has very small print.
Dr Ann Skea, Reviewer
https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
Arthur Turfa's Bookshelf
Perforated
Chloe Yelena Miller
Lily Poetry Review Books
9781957755649, $18.00
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Perforated-Chloe-Yelena-Miller/dp/1957755644
Poems set in fixed places, real or imaginary, always speak to me, and this full-length collection is no exception. In a variety of forms, the speaker takes readers from several places in Italy, to New York, with brief references to Brussels and Portland, OR.
These places are not empty. People, mainly family, appear in them, in real time as well as memory. A few of them appear only in passing. There are humorous experiences with learning Italian, and somber reflections on mortality.
My Nostalgia opens the second section, and stands out as generations of a family assemble over coffee, or looking through photograph albums, as the smell of red sauce gravy fills the house and memories.
Current
Barbara Siegel Carlson
https://barbarasiegelcarlson.com
Lily Poetry Review Books
9781957755625, $18.00
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Current-Barbara-Siegel-Carlson/dp/1957755628
Again, there are poems of place, mainly Italian, some of the Balkans, as well as some introspective offerings about landscape and times past. The tone is gentle, quiet, while the subjects (as a major earthquake five decades ago) are not necessarily so.
Elegy to a Dancer stems from a dream about a long-deceased friend that wistfully evokes memories of time spent together "in a dance that spun us together so briefly"(p. 50), an excellent and poignant line to the poem.
A Young English Poet Looks On is the ost stunning of the poem here, and evokes a Spoon River Anthology vibe, but at greater length and depth. Here John Keats speaks of his final days in Rome, tended by his friend Joseph Severn, and thinking of Fanny Brawne.The tone is calm and reflective, the writing lyrical and moving. (p.43)
A Brief History of My Sex Life
Subhaga Crystal Bacon
https://subhagacrystalbacon.com
Lily Poetry Review Books
9781957755618, $18.00
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-My-Sex-Life/dp/195775561X
This collection focuses on the speaker's search for self-identity, coming to terms with herself, and finally coming out. While neither the first or last of such collections, this particular full-length stands out for its tone, mixture of poetic styles, and its ability to sustain the themes. Readers will neither be bored nor find the collection repeating th same things over and over.
Sylvia Plath is not only referenced in one poem's title (You do not do, you do not do/Any more black shoe - Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" (p. 15), but similar dynamics appear in being raised by a German immigrant parent who married an American. In this case the pressures to be thin, conform, and otherwise fit in are depicted, but without anger.
The title poem shares portions of the speaker's history with men and women. Its concluding line can be considered a leitmotiv for the entire collection. (I was broken then, some newness in me worn thin) (p. 17). In the succeeding poems, the speaker enters a quest for wholeness and affirmation of her identity.
Arthur Turfa
Reviewer
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Starting in the Middle
Tik Maynard
Trafalgar Square Books
https://trafalgarbooks.com
9781646012480, $26.95, PB, 336pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Middle-Horses-Minutes-Midlife/dp/1646012488
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/starting-in-the-middle-tik-maynard/1146358732
Synopsis: After building a dream life in equestrian sport, family, farm, and a clear purpose Tik Maynard found himself haunted by uncertainty. Was he still learning? Still evolving? Or simply coasting?
"Starting in the Middle" chronicles his year-long journey to rekindle passion, chase challenge, and redefine mastery -- by accepting an invitation to compete in the Road to the Horse, the high-stakes World Championship of Colt Starting.
A gripping follow-up to his earlier memoir, "In the Middle Are the Horsemen" (20180, Tik blends heart-pounding personal stakes with intimate storytelling as he studies with elite trainers, faces self-doubt, and prepares for 265 make-or-break minutes with an untouched colt.
Along the way, he explores the very core of connection between man and horse, student and mentor, father and child.
"In The Middle Are The Horsemen" provides:
A behind-the-scenes view of the Road to the Horse competition
Lessons from leading voices in natural horsemanship and animal behavior
Deep reflections on parenting, identity, and personal reinvention
Powerful metaphors that bridge colt-starting and midlife evolution
Candid insights from a rider unafraid to rethink everything he knows
Critique: Exceptional, insightful, inspirational, and an inherently fascinating read from start to finish, "Starting in the Middle: How Horses, Those Who Study Them, and 265 Minutes with One Colt Helped Me Find Myself at Midlife" by Tik Maynard impressively honest account of a man who confronted midlife, not as a crisis, but (with a colt, a countdown, and a call to grow) as a life enhancing, life fulfilling, life embracing opportunity. While this paperback edition of "Starting in the Middle" from Trafalgar Square Books is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary American Biography/Memoir collections, it should be noted for fans of Horse Riding and Equestrian Sports from Trafalgar Square Books that it is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $2.99).
Editorial Note: Tik Maynard (www.copperlineequestrian.com) spent much of his twenties competing full time in the sport of Modern Pentathlon (running, swimming, shooting, fencing, show jumping). He was on the Canadian National Team and won the National Championships twice, and he competed at multiple World Cups, World Championships, and at the 2007 Pan-Am Games in Rio de Janeiro. Maynard has evented at the Advanced level and been Long-Listed and Short-Listed for the Canadian National Three-Day Event Team. He won the Freestyle twice at the Thoroughbred Makeover (2015, 2018) and judged it once (2017). Maynard won the Road to the Horse World Championship of Colt Starting in 2024 and 2025. He travels year-round, teaching clinics in the United States, Canada, England, and Scotland, and is an online instructor for The Horseman's University and the Noelle Floyd Equestrian Masterclass. He is a regular guest on podcasts and a contributor to many equestrian magazines and online news sources. He is the author of In the Middle Are the Horsemen and Starting in the Middle.
Tender, philosophical, and fiercely compelling, Starting in the Middle reminds us that real transformation often begins just after we think the story's already been written.
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat
R. Crumb
Fantagraphics
www.fantagraphics.com
9798875001383, $19.99 pbk
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Fritz-Cat/dp/B0FDFPPSYW
Synopsis: The iconic comics that started it all, making R. Crumb famous - against his will.
Robert Crumb's first iconic character - and still possibly his most widely known - was Fritz the Cat: the horny, high, hipster feline whose wild adventures and sexual escapades captivated countercultural audiences from the mid-'60s until 1972, when Ralph Bakshi turned the strips into an X-rated animated film that Crumb hated so much, he famously killed off the character and never returned to him.
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is a black-and-white graphic novel compilation of all of R. Crumb's countercultural comix about Fritz the Cat, a randy, anthropomorphic tabby tomcat obsessed with sex and marijuana in the 1960's. The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is emphatically an adults-only graphic novel due to drug use, violence, sex, and an especially disturbing scene where Fritz rapes the tied-up girlfriend of a member of a leftist group - an act which leads the entire group to gang-rape her.
This horrific black comedy scene was rewritten in the Fritz the Cat animated movie (directed by Ralph Bakshi and created without R. Crumb's approval - the legal rights to make the movie were obtained from R. Crumb's ex-wife). In the movie, the group of leftists are reimagined as neo-Nazis and Fritz does not incite or participate in the gang-rape. Instead, Fritz is horrified by the gang-rape, and tries to comfort the victim afterward. Fritz later denounces the group in a scene that R. Crumb (himself a leftist) despised. For this and other reasons, R. Crumb infamously hated the Fritz the Cat movie, and responded by killing off Fritz the Cat in a notorious final comic, "Fritz the Cat, Superstar".
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat contains all the Fritz stories from the earliest sketchbook-drawn tales ("Hey, Ol' Cat!" and "Fritz Comes On Strong") to the wild adventure stories ("Special Agent for the C.I.A.") to the Fritz stories adapted into the animated movie ("Fritz the No-Good") all the way to "Fritz the Cat, Superstar" and its fatal ending.
Critique: The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is a graphic novel compilation featuring a main character who is unapologetically misogynist, marijuana-addled, implied to commit incest, implied to commit murder, and in at least one scene, an unambiguous rapist. The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is also an iconic piece of countercultural history, and the genesis of an X-rated animated film that permanently transformed commercial animation (once seen as a medium only for children). The final comic encapsulates creator R. Crumb's fury and despair over what fame did to his creation. The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is far more than the sum of its parts; it is both narrative and meta-narrative, and deserves to be studied as a slice of 60's counterculture; as an example of physical and sexual violence in underground comix; and as a centerpiece in the debate of creator rights versus commercialization. The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat is a "must" especially for library collections that focus on underground comix or 60's counterculture.
Clint Travis
Reviewer
Isha Singh's Bookshelf
Drifty Silence and She: Selected Poems & Micropoems
Ram Krishna Singh
Edizioni Universum, Italy
9791282016278, $TBA
Amazon
https://www.amazon.it/Drifty-silence-Selected-poems-micropoems/dp/B0G4SKM2N7
Ram Krishna Singh's Drifty Silence and She is distinguished by its minimalist aesthetics which engages with the existential predicaments of modern life. Published by Edizioni Universum in November 2025, it comprises 52 titled poems, 10 four-line micropoems, 54 haiku, and 55 tanka, totaling over 200 discrete poetic utterances. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Italian educator and poet Renza Agnelli (1951-2025). Her posthumous poem 'No One Should Be Left Behind' serves as an ethical touchstone for the collection.
The collection continues to explore the themes of his earlier works, such as Against the Waves (2021), Poems and Micropoems (2023), and Knocking Vistas and Other Poems (2024). However, this volume stands out for its distinctive synthesis of form and content. An imagistic technique of Japanese poetic forms converges with deeply personal meditations on aging, desire, spiritual uncertainty, and socio-political disillusionment. The structural organization of the collection falls into clearly demarcated sections, creating what might be termed a "poetics of gradation": from the relatively expansive titled poems through the compressed micropoems to the ultra-condensed haiku and tanka forms.
Thematic Architecture and Conceptual Unity
The thematic coherence of Drifty Silence and She emerges from its unique dialogism. Mikhail Bakhtin"s concept of dialogism is an internal dialogue between impulses: the longing for transcendence and the pull of corporeal existence, the desire for connection and the reality of isolation, along with the search for meaning and the confrontation with absurdity. This dialogic tension exists across the entire collection, creating what Bakhtin would recognize as a 'polyphonic structure'. Multiple voices and perspectives coexist without final synthesis.
The opening poem, 'Twin Flame,' establishes a connection with severance. This is done by introducing the metaphysical conceit of souls as that 'were one once' now seeking reunion, "despite havens of hate / media carnage." This reveals Singh's method through the juxtaposition of personal yearning against the backdrop of contemporary chaos. The poem's final image of 'pairs becoming whole' offers a provisional hope that subsequent poems will repeatedly interrogate and complicate.
Three dominant thematic clusters organize the collection's concerns: the metaphysical and spiritual, the erotic and corporeal, and the socio-political. These categories interpenetrate in ways that recall T.S. Eliot's concept of the 'unified sensibility,' wherein thought and feeling, intellect and sensation, remain fused rather than dissociated. In 'In Chain,' for instance, the speaker's body becomes simultaneously "my prison" and the site of spiritual aspiration, unable to "escape its dictates / and fly to divine." This poem exemplifies what we might term Singh's 'somatics of the sacred', wherein the body is a paradoxical ground of both limitation and possibility.
The erotic dimension of Singh's poetry has frank engagement with sexuality in aging bodies. Poems such as 'Sleep Divorce,' 'Freaky Bodies,' and 'Body's No Picnic' confront the deterioration of marital intimacy. These add value with an honesty that eschews sentimentality and cynicism. The poem 'Sleep Divorce' opens with the stark declaration that "She shuns the normal, the erotic." Then it proceeds to catalog the physical and emotional distance between partners who now occupy separate rooms. The wife, "withdrawn to mobile listening to / old songs on YouTube not answering / my distress call sleeping or awake," becomes an emblem of contemporary isolation. The poem's closing line, "I breathe longings shuffle eerie hours," captures the speaker's liminal existence. Singh's poems resist what we might call the 'desexualization imperative' applied to aging bodies, insisting instead on the persistence of erotic longing even as bodies fail. In 'Body's No Picnic,' the speaker acknowledges the wife's legitimate grievances ("she blames me for changing size / shifting shape and cracking bones"). The speaker affirms a stubborn love: "I love you as you are / let's carry no useless weight."
The socio-political dimension of the book emerges most forcefully in poems such as 'General Election', 'Abandoned,' 'Systemic Romance,' 'Absurd Maze,' 'Freedom,' and 'New Racism,' which engage contemporary Indian politics with a sardonic eye. The poems critique what Singh perceives as the commodification of democracy and the rise of communal antagonism. 'General Election' employs the trope of repetition to suggest political stasis. For example, "voting the same prophets / attired differently / aspiring the same throne / proclaiming the same faith." The poem's sardonic tone intensifies in its characterization of political revelations that "desecrate democracy." It positions politicians as false prophets who "sit over with black guards / vying to excel the others."
A more provocative take is 'Systemic Romance,' which explicitly names the "Trump-Modi era" as inimical to "sublime," associating both leaders with a politics of "divide and rule through / trade war and extremism." The poem's speaker positions himself in opposition to nationalist rhetoric: "I don't share their tangerine / nor stream in their landscape / even if I'm consumed / in the bleakness of fire or flood." Here we might invoke postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha's concept of the 'unhomely' to describe the speaker's alienation from dominant nationalist narratives. The speaker occupies a position of internal exile. Physically he is present within the nation-space but psychically he is estranged from its governing ideologies.
The idea of 'New Racism' identifies caste and religion as fault lines that "sustain leaders and uphold / nation's after-image." The poem's bitter conclusion speaks in the lines, "god too is annoyed / to see design gaps in / bipeds delivered: / their genitals stink with / dumb head and bruised grapefruits." This employs scatological imagery to deflate human pretension and divine authority. This move recalls Bakhtinian carnivalesque, where the sacred is brought low through bodily imagery. Although Singh's deployment of such imagery lacks carnival's celebratory dimension, it veers instead toward the scabrous and misanthropic.
Poetic Technique and Formal Innovation
The formal achievement of Drifty Silence and She lies in Singh's adroit manipulation of line, breath and image across multiple poetic modes. The collection moves from longer poems through micropoems to haiku and tanka. This enacts a progressive condensation that mirrors the collection's thematic concern with silenced unsayable. One might understand this trajectory through the lens of Russian Formalism, particularly Viktor Shklovsky's concept of defamiliarization (ostranenie). Moreover, he is presenting similar thematic materials across radically different formal constraints. Singh 'makes strange' both the subject matter and our habitual modes of reading. He is compelling fresh attention to the relationship between form and content.
The titled poems exhibit a formal variety, ranging from free verse to quasi-syllabic patterns. 'Know and Move' exemplifies Singh's method of accumulation and assertion. Hence, building toward its gnomic conclusion: "taste the rage / know and move / the destination waits." The poem employs a catalog structure which lists abstractions ("quest courage love / hope faith beauty / nature universe god") that are declared "all fused within us." This technique recalls Walt Whitman's enumerative poetics, though Singh's catalogs tend toward the philosophical rather than the sensory. His tone lacks Whitman's exuberance, substituting instead a weary stoicism.
The enjambment in the poet's longer poems frequently produces semantic ambiguity. As a line breaks, it isolates syntactic units in ways that generate multiple possible readings. Consider the opening of 'I'm a Poet': "I appear vague to seekers of sublime / curate moments of mind-body dissonance / that's why I'm a poet." The phrase "seekers of sublime" resonates with Longinus's concept of the sublime as that which elevates and transports. But Singh positions himself as appearing 'vague' to such seekers. The verb "curate" introduces an interesting tension. It suggests deliberate selection and arrangement (as in a museum). Implying artistry, yet the object curated is "moments of mind-body dissonance." This suggests fragmentation rather than wholeness. This self-definition continues through anaphoric repetition ("that's why I'm a poet"), building an ars poetica that celebrates the poet as one who "merge[s] truth and dream with psychic echoes / put[s] things together in ways no one does."
The haiku section represents Singh's most interesting engagement with a non-Western poetic form. These poems demonstrate fidelity to haiku's figurative compression and willingness to adapt the form to Indian contexts/concerns. Classical haiku (as theorized by critics such as Makoto Ueda) typically presents a moment of natural observation that implies rather than states emotional or philosophical significance. Singh's haiku often preserve this structure while also expanding its thematic range. Consider: "too many gods / and so few flowers / whom to please?" This haiku employs the tripartite structure characteristic of the form. Additionally, it introduces a note of religious satire which is often absent in traditional Japanese examples. While the juxtaposition of abundant gods and scarce flowers implies the proliferation of deities in Hindu worship and the inadequacy of devotional offerings, the final question introduces an ironic tone foreign to haiku's customary objectivity.
Other haiku in the collection demonstrate the poet's facility with juxtaposition and imagistic precision: "full moon / a frozen dot- / deaf beyond." Here the cosmic (moon) and the sensory (frozen, deaf) interpenetrate in ways that speaks for the speaker's alienation from natural beauty and the universe's indifference to human observation. The image of the moon as 'frozen dot' performs a literalizing reduction and 'deaf beyond' introduces synesthetic confusion (deafness applied to vision) that mirrors the speaker's experiential disorientation.
The erotic haiku merits for their frank sensualism: "her lips / crimson with paan / stings my heart" transforms the traditional haiku nature image into bodily intimacy. The betel-stained lips become a visual image and metonymy for desire. 'Stings' introduces the paradox of pleasurable pain characteristic of erotic longing. This poem exemplifies what we might call Singh's 'erotics of the everyday', wherein mundane details (betel-chewing) become charged with sexual significance through the lover's gaze.
The tanka section extends the haiku's imagistic method across the five-line, 31-syllable (in Japanese) form. Singh's tanka employ narrative or dramatic elements foreclosed by haiku's brevity. "On the roof top / she waits for her man with / moon cake and lantern: / a flash of silver showers / on the mist-shrouded figure" constructs a scene of romantic anticipation. This is complete with atmospheric detail (mist, silver light) and the lover's iconic attributes (moon cake, lantern). The poem gestures toward Chinese and Japanese literary traditions while remaining rooted in contemporary experience, and thus, creating what one might term as 'transcultural poetics.'
Singh's deployment of poetic devices across these varied forms demonstrates a considerable technical range. Metaphor and simile appear throughout, though often in compressed, algebraic forms. In 'Casual Miracles,' for example, the comparison "like a brief smile / casually exchanged / stirs life long love / or a flap of / butterfly's wing / triggers tornado" employs the butterfly effect as romantic metaphor. The poem's structure enacts its theme by moving from the micro (smile, butterfly) to the macro (lifelong love, tornado) in a way that reflects the causal chains it describes.
Irony operates as a dominant rhetorical mode throughout the collection. It ranges from gentle wit to savage satire. 'Grand Daughter' exemplifies the former: when asked to care for grandfather, the six-year-old declines, declaring "he's a difficult / project to handle." The child's inadvertent reduction of grandfather to "project" captures a contemporary therapeutic discourse of the speaker's self-aware recognition of his own difficultness. More bitter is the irony of 'Celebrity,' which deflates social ambition: "Your name will die with you / if you pride in moving / across crowded room / with free scotch scratching / nude back of 2-minute friends." The poem's conclusion, "who smile to find way / deep inside you and / whisper between twisted sheets." These lines sexualize social climbing. At the same time it suggests the ultimate futility of such pursuits.
Style, Vision, and the Poetics of Disenchantment
Singh's poetic vision might be characterized as one of unillusioned clarity. One could term it that, in Matthew Arnold's words, a poetry of 'high seriousness' that nonetheless refuses consolation. Arnold's formulation in 'The Study of Poetry' that the best poetry possesses 'high truth and seriousness' which finds fulfillment and complication in Singh's work. The poems certainly aspire to truth-telling, particularly regarding aging, desire, and political corruption. At the same time, they undermine their own gestures toward meaning through irony and self-reflexivity.
The collection's title, Drifty Silence and She, itself encodes this dual focus. It fuels binaries, silence as absence and presence with drift as aimlessness and motion. The phrase 'drifty silence' indicates the quiet of disengagement. This aligns with existentialist philosophy, especially Albert Camus's concept of the absurd. Singh explicitly invokes in 'Treachery': "I seek solace in / Camus's absurd my silence / and indifferent universe." The speaker's alignment with Camusian absurdism positions him in a tradition of philosophical poetry as well. This tradition includes Wallace Stevens and Fernando Pessoa. These are the poets who similarly grapple with the absence of transcendent meaning while refusing nihilistic despair.
The 'She' of the title operates multiplicity: as beloved, as muse, as the feminine principle, as nature itself. The tanka and haiku sections in particular center on female figures, rendered through synecdoche (lips, breasts, curves) or metonymy (scent, touch, voice). This representational strategy invites feminist critique. It risks reducing women to 'body parts and objects of the male gaze.' Whether they interrogate that gaze or simply reproduce it is less clear. The above lines also invoke a clear similarity with the conventions of the 'blazon'. These lines call to mind a poetic practice that was widely used in Elizabethan and Renaissance literature. Such descriptions were intended to celebrate beauty and admiration. This creates a sense of fragmentation. The presence of an observing gaze is there that shapes how the body is viewed. In this way, the lines not only reflect the stylistic charm of the blazon but also echo deeper cultural and aesthetic implications. However, Singh's treatment of the feminine occasionally transcends this limitation, as in 'Lovely as Ever.' It celebrates woman and tree as parallel figures of nurture: "a woman and a tree / feeding hungry mouths / shelter birds and beasts / nurture men and spirits / shower bliss on all." Here the feminine principle extends beyond the erotic to encompass the maternal and the ecological. One finds suggestions of a more capacious vision.
The spiritual dimension of Singh's poetry warrants careful attention, as it runs more through negation and skepticism rather than affirmation. Poems such as 'Beggar' critique religious dependence: "Eternal beggar: / always asking God for help / in everything from / meeting to love-making and / managing daily affairs." The poem characterizes faith as infantilizing dependency and reducing divinity to 'a convenient tool' for 'fulfillment of desires.' This critique recalls Freudian psychoanalytic readings of religion as wish-fulfillment. Moreover, it connects with Freud's The Future of an Illusion, although Singh's tone is more sardonic than analytical.
The poet's skepticism coexists with moments of residual spiritual longing. Furthermore it creates what might be termed a poetics of 'negative capability,' borrowing Keats's concept of the capacity to remain 'in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.' In 'Flecks of Light,' the speaker locates illumination "hidden in darkness / drifty silence," demonstrating that silence itself may constitute a form of spiritual experience, albeit one divested of traditional religious content. This recalls the apophatic tradition in mysticism, symbolizing that the divine is approached through negation rather than assertion, even as Singh's silence seems more existential than mystical. In this collection, it is born of epistemological humility rather than theological conviction.
Critical Assessment and Personal Response
Drifty Silence and She is notable for its formal range, thematic involvement and unflinching honesty. Singh's adaptation of Japanese poetic forms to Indian contexts demonstrates the possibility of transcultural poetics, thus, creating a work that is simultaneously rooted in specific cultural experience along with being formally cosmopolitan. The collection's movement from longer poems through micropoems to haiku and tanka creates a compelling architecture for a reader. Here the progressive formal compression mirrors the speaker's movement toward silence and acceptance.
The book's strengths are multiple. Firstly, Singh's technical facility across varied forms shows fine versatility. The poet moves from discursive free verse to compressed imagistic modes. Secondly, the thematic integration of the collection creates genuine unity of purpose. Despite the formal variety, the poems speak to one another and develop interlocking concerns across different registers. Thirdly, the collection's honesty regarding aging, desire and disillusionment offers a necessary corrective to poetry that usually sentimentalizes or aestheticizes these experiences. Singh refuses easy consolation. He insists on the complexities and indignities of lived experiences.
Yet, the relentless focus on disappointment and decline, howsoever honest, occasionally becomes monotonous, particularly in the longer titled poems. The political poems, being incisive in their critique, sometimes veer toward predictable targets and familiar arguments. Moreover, the representation of women in the erotic poems occasionally reduces the feminine to body and sensation. While poems like 'Lovely as Ever' gesture toward the collection as a whole, it tends to position women as objects of desire, sites of frustration, or figures of nurture rather than subjects in their own right with agency and a human heart.
What I find most compelling in Singh's work is its resistance to false transcendence. Singh's insistence on disenchantment feels both bracing and necessary in an era when much poetry seeks consolation in nature, spirituality or aesthetic beauty. His best poems achieve what one might call "a beauty of clarity," because here the aesthetic pleasure derives from precise articulation of difficult truths. The haiku "full moon / a frozen dot - / deaf beyond" exemplifies this aesthetic: the image is stark, even bleak, yet possesses a formal perfection that metamorphoses observation into art.
Similarly, 'Old Files' achieves a kind of negative epiphany: "I burn my years and erase / memories that couldn't be stacked / against the wall of a broken home." The poem enacts its own argument, moving toward acceptance through renunciation. The final lines, "let me live life through my self / doing nothing thinking nothing / just sitting silently and watching / time takes care of the rest and life too,' articulate a Zen-like acceptance that nonetheless refuses to prettify or spiritualize.
Conclusion: The Poetics of Endurance
Ram Krishna Singh's achievement lies in articulating the texture of lived experience in all its complexity, disappointment and occasional beauty. Singh writes from and toward silence, creating a poetics that acknowledges the limits of language while insisting on the necessity of continued utterance.
The collection's dedication to Renza Agnelli, with her posthumous affirmation that 'no one should be left behind,' provides an ethical framework for reading Singh's work. Despite the speaker's disillusionment, the poems themselves constitute acts of witness and connection as they reach the readers across the silence. In this sense, the collection enacts its own argument: that even poetry of disenchantment can create the possibility of recognition and solidarity. Singh's achievement is to have written poems that refuse easy comfort and yet offer the consolation of accurate perception. The poet insists on the dignity of unflinching attention to what is.
For readers seeking poetry that engages contemporary experience with formal intelligence and emotional depth, Drifty Silence and She rewards careful attention. Singh's voice is distinctive and necessary, offering perspectives often excluded from contemporary poetry's dominant modes. It is a book that speaks to our present moment along with engaging enduring questions of meaning, connection and mortality, a book that insists, finally, on the value of continuing to speak even in the face of silence.
Bibliography
Arnold, Matthew. "The Study of Poetry." Essays in Criticism: Second Series. Macmillan, 1888.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson, University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Basho, Matsuo. The Essential Basho. Translated by Sam Hamill, Shambhala, 1999.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O'Brien, Vintage, 1991.
Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Translated by James Strachey, W. W. Norton, 1989.
Keats, John. Selected Letters. Edited by Robert Gittings, Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6-18.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage, 1979.
Shklovsky, Viktor. "Art as Technique." Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Translated by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
Singh, Ram Krishna. Against the Waves: Selected Poems. Authors Press, 2021.
Drifty Silence and She: Selected Poems & Micropoems. Edizioni Universum, 2025.
Knocking Vistas and Other Poems. Authors Press, 2024.
Poems and Micropoems. Southern Arizona Press, 2023.
Ueda, Makoto. Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford University Press, 1991.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1855. Modern Library, 2001.
Isha Singh
Reviewer
Israel Drazin's Bookshelf
Echoes of Egypt: A Haggadah
Dr. Joshua Berman
Koren Publishers
https://korenpub.com
9789655830156, $29.95, 156 pages
https://www.amazon.com/Koren-Tanakh-Land-Israel-Multilingual/dp/9655830152
Echoes of Egypt: A Superb Haggada by Dr. Berman
Passover is one of the most significant holidays of Judaism. Many Jews consider it second to the Shabbat. It is the first command given to the Israelite ancestors during the period when Moses was rescuing the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. It teaches that Judaism stresses the need for all people, not only Jews, must be free, use their intelligence to learn and improve themselves, become all they can be from what they learn, and use what they learn to improve the world for all that is in it. The message is repeated often in different ways in the Haggadah, a word meaning "the telling (of the message)."
In Echoes of Egypt: A Haggada, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman - professor of Tanakh at Bar-Ilan University and an internationally respected biblical scholar - brings his formidable academic expertise into the home dining room of the Passover Seder. The Seder is a non-biblical setting where the message is repeated by reading the Haggada. The result of Berman's book is a presentation that is intellectually serious, visually stunning, and spiritually stirring.
Rabbi Berman is well known for his earlier works, including Created Equal and Inconsistency in the Torah, as well as his more recent Ani Maamin, published by Maggid Books. In those volumes, he explored the theological and literary dimensions of the Torah with scholarly precision. In his Haggada, however, he turns his scholarship toward experiential understanding. He does not merely explain the Exodus - he reconstructs its world.
His Haggada's most distinctive feature is its rich visual presentation. The 156-page volume contains nearly four dozen colorful images drawn from the art, inscriptions, monuments, and iconography of ancient Egypt. These images are not decorative embellishments; they are interpretive tools. They allow readers to see the imperial world that shaped the Israelites' bondage and, more importantly, the ideological revolution that the Exodus represents.
Rabbi Berman frames the Exodus not simply as liberation from slavery, but as a bold theological protest against tyrannical empire. Ancient Egypt was not merely a powerful state; it was a civilization built on the control of humans by powerful kings, rigid hierarchy, and the sacralization of power. Against this backdrop, the Exodus emerges as a radical rejection of tyranny and a redefinition of human dignity. The God of Israel, unlike Pharaoh, cannot be contained in monuments or manipulated through ritual. Time itself is transformed: history is no longer cyclical and oppressive, but purposeful and redemptive.
The book opens with nearly twenty concise yet thought-provoking essays that illuminate central themes of Passover. Throughout the Haggada, these insights are expanded upon on the pages following the traditional text, enriching rather than overwhelming it. Rabbi Berman's tone is accessible without sacrificing depth. He writes as both scholar and teacher, guiding readers through complex ideas with clarity and passion.
The famous declaration - "In every generation, a person must see himself as if he himself came out of Egypt" - serves as the heartbeat of this work. By immersing readers in the sensory and ideological world of ancient Egypt, Rabbi Berman makes the mandate of full freedom tangible. We begin to grasp not only what Jewish ancestors endured, but what they defied. The Exodus ceases to be a distant memory and becomes an ongoing moral challenge: How do we resist modern forms of Pharaoh? How do we affirm the Torah's revolutionary vision of human worth? What is the purpose of life?
Echoes of Egypt succeeds on multiple levels. It is visually sumptuous, historically grounded, theologically rich, and spiritually energizing. For families seeking to deepen their Seder discussion, educators looking to contextualize the Exodus, and readers who appreciate the fusion of scholarship and Jewish religion, this Haggada offers a rare and compelling contribution.
In short, Rabbi Berman has crafted more than a commentary - he has created a joyous and educational experience. Echoes of Egypt invites us not only to remember the past, but to see it, feel it, and carry its message forward to an improved world.
Israel Drazin, Reviewer
www.booksnthoughts.com
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
Guardians of Life
Kiliii Yuyan, author
Charles C. Mann, contributor
Braided River
c/o Mountaineers Books
www.mountaineersbooks.org
9781680518382, $49.95, HC, 224pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Guardians-Life-Indigenous-Knowledge-Restoring/dp/1680518380
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/guardians-of-life-kiliii-yuyan/1147936766
Synopsis: "Guardians of Life: Indigenous Science, Indigenous Wisdom and Restoring the Planet" takes readers on an extraordinary visual odyssey from the Amazon rainforest to Greenland's sea ice and revealing Indigenous communities as Earth's most powerful protectors.
"Guardians of Life" is stunning volume, published by Braided River, is powered by the collective wisdom of more than two dozen Indigenous voices, including activist Quannah Chasinghorse and Palauan statesman Tommy Remengesau Jr. Their expertise is brought forward through National Geographic photojournalist Kiliii Yuyan's striking imagery, the editorial mastery of bestselling author (1491) Charles Mann, and writer Gleb Raygorodetsky's insights.
Together, this compendium of powerful visual images by Kiliii Yuyan and their stories proves how traditional knowledge and modern innovation unite to safeguard the planet. The reader will witness profound stewardship in action ranging from Mongolia's sacred peaks to Palau's coral reefs, where ancient wisdom drives cutting-edge conservation.
Critique: This large format (8.90(w) x 12.10(h) x 0.80(d), 1.74 pounds) hardcover edition of "Guardians of Life: Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Science, and Restoring the Planet" is a magnificent testament to indigenous populations around the world and their universal commitment to care for (and live compatibly within) the ecosystems that comprising their various parts of the world. Informative, inspirational, and a fascinating read from start to finish, this coffee-table style edition from Braided River (https://www.braidedriver.org) is especially, uniquely, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Indigenous History & Nature Conservation collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: Informed by ancestry that is both Nanai (Siberian Indigenous) and Hezhe (Chinese-American,) photographer Kiliii Yuan explores the human relationship to the natural world from different cultural perspectives. Kiliii has produced seven stories for National Geographic and has contributed to Vogue, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, and The Nature Conservancy. He is one of PDN's 30 Photographers (2019), a National Geographic Explorer, and a member of Indigenous Photograph and Diversify Photo. In 2024 he was a presenter for the National Geographic LIVE series, reaching tens of thousands of people across North America with his story of circumpolar culture, life, and lands. Kiliii is based out of traditional Duwamish lands (Seattle). Visit him online at www.kiliii.com or on Instagram @kiliiiyuyan
Editorial Note #2: Charles C. Mann (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_C._Mann) is a journalist and author, most recently of The Wizard and the Prophet. His book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus won the National Academies of Science's award for best book of the year; its sequel, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, was a New York Times bestseller.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Her Cold Justice
Robert Dugoni
https://www.robertdugonibooks.com
Thomas & Mercer
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662524622, $28.99, HC, 399pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Her-Cold-Justice-Keera-Duggan/dp/1662524625
Synopsis: In a quiet South Seattle neighborhood, a suspected drug smuggler and his girlfriend are murdered in their home. When a young man named Michael Westbrook is accused of the brutal double homicide, his uncle JP Harrison turns to Keera Duggan to defend him. JP is Keera's trusted investigator, and he desperately needs Keera to save his nephew against escalating odds.
The evidence is circumstantial -- Michael worked with one of the victims, drugs were found in his possession, and he bolted from authorities. Ruthless star prosecutor Anh Tran has gotten convictions on much less. With the testimony of two prison informants, the case looks grave. But Keera never concedes defeat. To free her client, she must dig deep before Tran crushes both of them.
As the investigation gets more twisted with each new find, Keera is swept up in a mystery with far-reaching consequences. This case isn't just murder. It's looking like a conspiracy. And getting justice for Michael could be the most dangerous promise Keera has ever made.
Critique: A simply riveting read from beginning to end, "Her Cold Justice" by novelist Robert Dugoni will hold a tremendous appeal to fans of deftly crafted murder mysteries and original suspense thrillers. A master of the suspense/mystery genre, Robert Dugoni's newest novel, "Her Cold Justice" is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary Mystery/Suspense collections. It should be noted for the growing legions of Robert Dugoni fans that this hardcover edition of "Her Cold Justice" from Thomas & Mercer is also available in paperback (9781662524639, $12.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).
Editorial Note: Robert Dugoni (www.robertdugonibooks.com) is the author of several series, including Tracy Crosswhite, Charles Jenkins, David Sloane, and Keera Duggan. His stand-alone novels include A Killing on the Hill, Hold Strong (coauthored with Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree), Damage Control, The 7th Canon, and The World Played Chess. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, a Newsweek magazine staff pick for favorite books of all time, was Suspense Magazine's 2018 Book of the Year and won Dugoni an AudioFile Earphones Award for his narration. The Washington Post named his nonfiction expose The Cyanide Canary a best book of the year. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a multitime winner for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has been a finalist for many other awards. Dugoni's books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages, reaching over twelve million readers worldwide.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Mews and Views for the Curious Cat Lover
Elyse Cregar
Independently Published
www.felineonline.net
9780962129254, $12.99, PB, 207pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Mews-Views-Curious-Cat-Lover/dp/0962129259
Additional Vendors
https://books2read.com/elysemcregar
Synopsis: Simply stated, "Mews and Views for the Curious Cat Lover" is a compendium of cat related mysteries, histories and folklore. For example:
In a rather bizarre twist of fate, the ancient Egyptians and their mummified pets may have the last word, so to speak. Are the molecules of cat mummies embedded in our morning cereal?
What strategies might help me find my missing pet?
Why are black cats often not easily adoptable?
Why have legends of cats having nine lives persisted throughout the centuries?
Don't miss Movie Night 30,000 years Ago! Immerse yourself in a journey of imagination.
Like the legend of cats having nine lives, beliefs have persisted throughout the centuries that cats' spirits may outlive death. The spirit world of prehistoric cave artists may offer clues about our human-feline connections.
Humans who are owned by their cats may find ways in this small volume to understand feline behaviors, adaptations and history. Elyse Cregar provides new findings on many unusual topics and answers often puzzling questions. A book to keep handy as it may prove beneficial to cats as well as to cat lovers.
"Mews and Views for the Curious Cat Lover" is written by career public school librarian, historian and professed cat lover, Elyse Cregar who shares 25 short articles about cats, with a few bites from the lion species tossed in. She is intrigued by the adaptive strategies that enable cats to function effectively as predators, prey, and companions to humans. In these pages you will find her commentary on everything from the history of the man-eating lions of Tsavo to the evolution of toe beans, those adorable cushioned feline slippers.
Arguably one of nature's most efficient predators, domestic cats have evolved to become our loving furry friends, even soulmates. So, invite your pet to join you in your easy chair as you read. And as she gently kneads your arm, remember, she has chosen you to be her companion, your home to be her haven. As for her ancestral behaviors, watch her play. Watch her study you with those brilliant, intelligent eyes. Will her thoughts forever remain a mystery to her human companions?
Critique: Original, unique, informative, fascinating, and a fun read for all dedicated cat lovers from start to finish, "Mews and Views for the Curious Cat Lover" by Elyse Cregar will prove to be an immediate and enduringly popular pick for personal and community library cat themed collections of feline facts, fiction and folklore! It should be noted that this paperback edition of "Mews and Views for the Curious Cat Lover" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $2.99, Amazon).
Editorial Note: A listing of books by Elyse Cregar is available online at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4368787.Elyse_Cregar
The Alchemy of Intuition: Embodied Practices to Access Your Inner Voice
Tiffany McBride
Brave Healer Productions
9781969999017, $18.88, PB, 309pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Intuition-Embodied-Practices-Access/dp/1969999012
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-alchemy-of-intuition-tiffany-mcbride/1149291646
Synopsis: With the publication of "The Alchemy of Intuition: Embodied Practices to Access Your Inner Voice", Dr. Tiffany McBride offers an initiation into the sacred art of remembering who you are.
She contends that we are born with an inner knowing -- a quiet, powerful voice that speaks beneath the noise of fear, conditioning, and expectation. Yet over time, we forget. We learn to silence our truth to fit into systems that value conformity over authenticity, logic over intuition, and fear over trust.
"The Alchemy of Intuition" is an initiation into remembering that blends psychology, spirituality, and embodied practice. Dr. Tiffany McBride and her expert cast of co-authors guide readers through the alchemical stages of transformation -- dissolving old patterns, awakening inner wisdom, and integrating intuition as a living, grounded presence.
Through Jungian teachings, energy work, and non-ordinary states of consciousness, "The Alchemy of Intuition" offers a path to reclaim sovereignty of the Self -- to transmute fear into trust, shadow into light, and silence into the song of the soul.
As Dr. McBride advocates -- Your intuition is not lost. It's just waiting for you to remember!
Critique: Original, insightful, inspiring, thoughtful and thought-provoking, "The Alchemy of Intuition: Embodied Practices to Access Your Inner Voice" is an extraordinary and holistic introduction to spiritual self-healing and growth. Deftly crafted and throughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "The Alchemy of Intuition" is especially appropriate for the non-specialist general reader with an interest in DIY mental and spiritual self-help/self-healing. While highly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Holistic Medicine, Spirituality, and Self-Improvement collections, it should be noted that this trade paperback edition of "The Alchemy of Intuition" from Brave Healer Productions is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $7.99)
Editorial Note: Dr. Tiffany McBride is the creatrix of Holistic Vibrations LLC and The Mystic Muse, an integrative clinical psychotherapist who bridges evidence-based trauma healing with intuitive and holistic modalities. Her work supports individuals in healing trauma, reconnecting with their inner wisdom, and transforming their lives through depth-oriented, soul-centered care. www.themysticmuse.org.
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
The Unwritten Rules of Magic
Harper Ross
St. Martin's Press
https://us.macmillan.com/smp
9781250394552, $28.00, HC, 320pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Unwritten-Rules-Magic-Harper-Ross/dp/1250394554
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-unwritten-rules-of-magic-harper-ross/1147243765
Synopsis: Emerson Clarke can't remember a time when she felt in control. Her father (a celebrated author) was a chaotic force until he got Alzheimer's. Her mother turned to gin. And recently, her teen daughter has shut her out without explanation. If only she could arrange reality the same way she controls the stories she ghostwrites, life could be perfect.
Or so she thinks.
After her father's funeral, Emerson steals his vintage typewriter (the one he'd forbidden anyone to touch) and tests its keys by typing out a frivolous wish. When it comes true the very next day, she tries another. Then, those words also spring to life. Suddenly, she becomes obsessed with using the typewriter to rewrite happiness for herself and her daughter.
But the more she shapes her real-life, the more she uncovers disturbing truths about her family's history and the unexpected cost of every story-come-true. She should destroy the typewriter, yet when her daughter's secret finally emerges, Emerson is torn between paying the price for bending fate and embracing the uncertainty of an unscripted life.
Critique: Original, exceptional, a fun and riveting read from start to finish, "The Unwritten Rules Of Magic" demonstrates novelist Harper Ross' mastery of the magical realism genre and her distinctive flair for the kind of imaginative and narrative driven storytelling style that has earned her legions of appreciative fans. While this hardcover edition of "The Unwritten Rules Of Magic" from St. Martin's Press is unreservedly recommended as a popular pick for community library Fantasy Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that it is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Harper Ross (https://harperrossbooks.com) has enjoyed a lifelong love affair with the dramatic story worlds in books and movies. After leaving her legal practice to raise her kids, she discovered her own creative side and began writing novels that explore friendship, family, and forgiveness.
When You're a Boy
Blake Nuto
Jolly Fish Press
c/o North Star Editions, Inc.
https://northstareditions.com
9781631639876, $19.99, HC, 32pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/When-Youre-Boy-Blake-Nuto/dp/1631639870
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-youre-a-boy-blake-nuto/1146868500
Synopsis: When you're a boy, you're told how to be like the white-roaring oceans. But there is also the fierceness of flowers, the glory of color, and the beauty of dreaming. Wandering through forests, crossing rivers, and climbing mountains, "When You're a Boy" is a powerful and moving picture book exploration of what it means to be a boy.
Critique: Author and illustrator Blake Nuto's new picture book, "When You're a Boy" is an extraordinary exploration of what a boy is told he should be -- and so much more. Fun, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, "When You're a Boy" is an especially recommended pick for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library Boys/Men and Gender Values themed picture book collections for children ages 4-8. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "When You're a Boy" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Blake Nuto (https://www.blakenuto.com) is an award-winning writer living in lutruwita (Tasmania), Australia, with his wife and three children. He is a trained teacher with a deep love of literature and a desire to integrate philosophy and mindfulness into education. He is the author of A Day That's Ours and Child of Galaxies. When You're a Boy is his first authored and illustrated book.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Matthew McCarty's Bookshelf
Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
Paul McCartney, author
Ted Widmer, editor
Liveright Publishing
c/o W.W. Norton
https://wwnorton.com/liveright
9781324096306, $45.00 US / $60.00 CAN / $21.99 Kindle, 550 pgs
W.W. Norton
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324096306
Paul McCartney is perhaps one of the most recognizable people on Earth. This former Beatle, prolific songwriter, and humanitarian is one of the most powerful figures in music history. The decade of the 1970s witnessed a part of Paul that left in its wake songs like "Band on the Run," "Jet," and "Live and Let Die." Wings:The Story of a Band on the Run (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2025, xxv, 550 pgs., $45 US, $60 CAN) is the chronicle of Paul's efforts at breaking away from the Beatles with the creation of the band Wings and some of the most iconic music of the last half century. Wings is told in an oral history format, masterfully edited by historian Ted Witmer with a narrative that reminds readers of just how important this band was both for Paul as a performer and Paul as a songwriter.
The 1970s was a decade that saw a sustained interest in the Beatles through the release of compilation albums and television programs. However, the 70s also witnessed an intense effort to see what the former bandmates could accomplish individually. Wings was an effort by Paul, his wife Linda, and their bandmates to move past the Beatles and take advantage of a new era in songwriting, musicology, and fan interests. Paul made a conscious effort to take Wings to the masses and deliver a product that was great to listen to in the comforts of a bedroom as well as in the halls of some of the biggest venues in the world. Wings helped to create rock and roll sounds of the 70s and laid the foundation for the musical styles that would come to popularize the 1980s.
Wings is well-written and engaging. All of the members of Wings are represented in the stories and anecdotes that are presented in an honest and nonthreatening manner. Ted Widmer, as editor, has woven together a history of this rock and roll phenomenon as well as of the 70s as arguably the most important decade in music history. Wings is a very cathartic reading experience for a reviewer who grew up listening to the music of the 70s and 80s.Wings should be a part of any music lovers' bookshelf or the shelf of anyone interesting the last half century of pop culture.
Matthew W. McCarty, EdD
Reviewer
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
Church Privacy: Who Cares? You!
Grace Buckler
https://gracebuckler.com
NAD Publishing
https://nad-publishing.com
9781736947869, $13.99, HC, 130pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Church-Privacy-Who-Cares-You/dp/1736947869
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/church-privacy-who-cares-you-grace-buckler/1145673507
Synopsis: In today's digital age, privacy is a precious commodity that even the most sacred spaces must vigilantly protect.
With the publication of "Church Privacy: Who Cares? You!: Simple Ways Anyone Can Feed the Flocks, Starve Risks, and Ditch Liabilities", Grace Buckler offers a groundbreaking look into safeguarding the sanctity and safety of church communities. Through Grace's insightful storytelling and teaching, readers embark on a transformative journey to ensure their congregations not only respect but champion privacy in all its forms.
For churchgoers and leaders alike, "Church Privacy: Who Cares? You!" is comprehensive DIY guide that sheds light on often overlooked vulnerabilities, providing easy, practical tips for managing privacy across physical, online, and digital communication. Readers will learn how to navigate the complex terrain of privacy laws, avoid legal pitfalls, and foster a culture of trust and awareness. From creating a personal privacy policy to sparking important conversations using scripture references, "Church Privacy: Who Cares? You!" is replete with resources designed for immediate application.
Empowering church communities to cultivate compassion, hospitality, and mutual respect, "Church Privacy: Who, Cares? You!" is more than a 'how-to' handbook; it is also call to action. It invites the reader to step into a role of leadership, ensuring that their church becomes a beacon of hope and a fortress of privacy in an increasingly transparent world.
Critique: Original, effective, 'real world' practical, deftly crafted, and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "Church Privacy: Who Cares? You! Simple Ways Anyone Can Feed the Flocks, Starve Risks, and Ditch Liabilities" is timely, needed, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, church, seminary, community, and college/university library Privacy Protection and On-Line Safety collections and supplemental Church Administration and Religious Studies curriculum reading lists. It should be noted for seminary students, clergy, church board members, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "Church Privacy: Who Cares? You!" from NAD Publishing is also readily available in paperback (9781736947821, $7.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).
Editorial Note: Grace Buckler (https://gracebuckler.com) is an award-winning consultant and advisor to Fortune 500 companies, the government, and faith organizations. She is a recognized privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity practitioner. She has presented on numerous privacy topics at global corporations (including Google and Meta), multinational associations, trade groups, educational institutions, youth clubs, and government organizations. Grace is the founder of The Privacy Advocate, LLC, a leading global data privacy consulting firm. She shares more of her knowledge in the companion books Church Privacy Team and Church Privacy 101
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Paul Lappen's Bookshelf
The Ageless Brain: How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime
Dale E. Bredesen, MD
Flatiron Books
www.flatironbooks.com
9781250362599, $29.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Ageless-Brain-Sharpen-Protect-Lifetime/dp/1250362598
For many years, a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease or other types of dementia has been a death sentence (go home and enjoy the time you have left; there is nothing that medical science can do). The author of this book strongly disagrees with that assertion.
In this book are many examples of people who have been able to slow, or stop, the progression of mental decline. How did they do it? Here are some recommendations. Greatly decrease, or eliminate, your consumption of sugar. Greatly increase your consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables (organic, if possible). Get a good night's sleep every night (at least 7 hours). Start exercising; strength training and High Intensity Interval Training are preferred. The best kind of exercise is that which you will do consistently, without even thinking about it. Your preferred exercise could be jogging, swimming, pickleball or golf. Strengthen your mental muscle by, for instance, learning a new language or learning how to play a musical instrument. There are many free online college courses on a myriad of subjects; try one and see if you like it.
Important Note: Do not wait until symptoms of mental decline appear before adopting any of these recommendations. Start them today, and maybe keep the symptoms away, permanently. There are many other possible causes of mental decline, including toxins in the air, lead water pipes, volatile organic compounds (VOC), pesticides and microplastics (which seem to be everywhere). The book contains a long list of things to check at your next blood test, and supplements to take to slow the onset of symptoms. Don't try to do all of them; pick a few at a time, then add to it.
For some people, the information in this book will be common knowledge. For others, this book will be a revelation. Any information that can slow the spread of Alzheimer's Disease through society without expensive drugs or surgery is highly recommended. This is highly recommended.
Paul Lappen, Reviewer
https://deadtreesreview.blogspot.com
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
Morality Play
Barry Unsworth
Knopf Doubleday Publishing
https://www.knopfdoubleday.com
9780525434092, $TBA pbk / $4.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Morality-Play-Norton-Paperback-Fiction/dp/0393315606
A Play For Modernity
Barry Unsworth's short novel "Morality Play" (1995) is a murder-mystery set in 14th century England, but it is much more. It is a story that explores the changing boundaries between the medieval and the modern and that illuminates the power of drama to help people understand their experiences.
The narrator of the book is a 23-year old priest, Nicholas Barber, who becomes restless with his calling, runs away, has a brief affair with a married woman, and meets a group of itinerant players who are burying one of their number. Nicholas joins the troupe which heads to a small village where they decide to make a play of the fresh murder of a 12-year old boy, Thomas Wells, in the community. A young deaf and dumb woman is being held for the murder. The troupe is compelled to perform their play for the local baron, Sir Richard de Guise (in a scene that reminded me of Hamlet's performance for Claudius). They come closer to the truth of the murder than they realize.
There are vivid pictures in this book of English medieval life, of corrupt monks and priests, plagues, dusty towns, jousting, knights, the life of wandering actors and performers called jongleurs, and much else. And the mystery itself is absorbing. Nevertheless, in my reading I found these features of the book secondary.
I found "Morality Play" most intriguing in the character development of Nicholas and in the attendant picture of a rising modernity. Nicholas is dissatisfied in his budding life as a cleric and ultimately decides that the life of a clergyman is not for him. "The impulse to run away had not been folly but the wisdom of the heart," (p. 206) he concludes. There is a turn to secularization in Nicholas's story, and to finding and following one's own star in life.
Many other features of the novel illustrate the move to and nature of the modern temprament. The players initially object to performing a play based upon the murder of young Thomas Wells in part because the story is not biblically-based and the meaning of it in the divine plan is not revealed (unlike, say, the Fall, or the story of Cain and Abel.) But as a member of the troupe observes, "Men can give meanings to things. That is no sin because our meanings are only for the time, they can be changed." (pp.74-75)
The troupe decides to perform its story of Thomas Wells to make money, a distinctively modern motivation. The members of the troupe investigate the circumstances surrounding the murder, and their play suggests how art and science are means of approaching the truth. Ultimately the murder is solved by an investigator sent by the King, and the story has something to say about the relationship between a rising central government and medieval feudalism. Finally, a young woman of easy virtue, Margaret, has been accompaning the troupe as the mistress of one of the players. She also does a great deal of value for the troupe and contributes towards preparation of the play about Thomas Wells. Yet, the troupe does not consider her as one of their number due to her gender. She becomes highly angry with this and leaves the players to make her way on her own.
Thus, I think this book has a great deal to say about the growth of secularism and the rise of views of personal growth and personal identity, naturalism in art, strong civil government, gender issues, and other matters that move the story forward from the medieval time in which it is set. The "Play of Thomas Wells" is itself a drama that tells a story of our modern world and of the factors which have led to its development.
John Quincy Adams (The American Presidents Series)
Robert V. Remini
Times Books
c/o Henry Holt
https://www.henryholt.com
9780805069396, $35.00 hc / $14.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/John-Quincy-Adams-American-Presidents/dp/0805069399
John Quincy Adams And American Nationalism
Robert Remini's brief study of John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) is part of the American Presidency Series edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The series has the commendable aim of introducing the reader to each of the Presidents in a volume of short scope. The broader aim, I think, is to reawaken an appreciation of the history of our country and to stimulate reflection on the American experience. Thus, each volume tries to present a story of a life and also to explain briefly what is unique about each President and makes him worthy to be remembered.
Remini gives an excellent discussion of John Quincy Adams's service to the United States, both during his Presidency and before and after it. The aspect of JQA's public service that stands out, both in his Presidency and otherwise, is his commitment to American Nationalism. By this I mean a devotion to creating a strong, united nation for all the people to promote the public welfare. JQA worked diligently to advance the interests of the entire American people, as he saw these interests, rather than to be a tool of any faction or party or momentary passion. Much of the time, he succeeded.
As President, JQA advocated the creation of public works and improvements to link the country together. He was a strong supporter of education, scientific advancement, and learning. He wanted the Federal government to play an active role in supporting these ends and worked towards the creation of an American university. (After his Presidency he was a strong advocate for the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.)
Before he assumed the Presidency, Adams served as the Secretary of State under James Monroe. He worked for the goal of American Nationalism by expanding the boundaries of the United States through a skillful exercise of diplomacy until they extended to the Pacific Ocean. JQA also was instrumental in the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine.
Following his presidency. JQA served as a Congressman from Massachusetts. He distinguished himself in working for the anti-slavery cause and, specifically, by his tireless opposition to the "gag rule" which aimed to prevent critical discussion of slavery-related issues in the halls of Congress.
Remini presents his material in a way that focuses on this theme of JQA's public service and on its nationalistic aspirations . He also points out how and why JQA failed to realize many of his goals, particularly during his term as the sixth President (1825-1828) Adams was named President by the House of Representatives following a highly contested election. It was alleged that he struck a "corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay, who became Adams's Secretary of State. This "corrupt bargain" doomed the Adams Presidency and tarnished both Adams's and Clay's careers.
Adams was also highly opinionated and stuffy and gave the impression of aloofness. He was not a good politician and lacked a certain ability to compromise or to work cooperatively with others. At one point Remini writes (p. 110): "It is really impossible to think of any other president quite like John Quincy Adams. He seemed intent on destroying himself and his administration. By the same token, it is difficult to think of a president with greater personal integrity." JQA was defeated for a second term by Andrew Jackson in a bitterly fought campaign. Among other things, Jackson possessed abundant popular appeal and charisma, in sharp contrast to JQA's aloof, intellectual character.
While Adams's Presidency failed, his goals and ideals were good. They lived on and deserve studying and remembering.
Remini also gives a good summary of Adams's personal life, adopting some of the psychohistory of JQA's recent biographers. He points out the stresses that Adams endured from his famous father and mother and the pressures placed upon him and his brothers for high achievement. JQA also imposed these pressures and expectations, alas, on his own children. There is a good discussion of Adams's failed love affair as a young man --probably the one passion of his life -- and of his subsequent marriage to Louisa Johnson. Remini describes JQAs extensive intellectual interests, his tendencies to anger and to depression and he links these traits in a sensible way to the failings of Adams's Presidency.
This is an excellent study of JQA which captures in short compass the essence and character of his contribution to the United States. Readers who want to learn more about JQA may wish to consider Fred Kaplan's recent book "John Quincy Adams: American Visionary or the earlier two-volume study by Samuel Flagg Bemis: "John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy" (1949) and "John Quincy Adams and the Union" (1956).
John Quincy Adams: Speeches and Writings
John Quincy Adams, author
David Waldstreicher, editor
Library of America
https://www.loa.org
9781598538083, $45.00 hc / $20.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D7GL212M
Library of America
https://www.loa.org/books/speeches-writings
John Quincy Adams In The Library of America
This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of American independence. In our troubled times, it is valuable to return to the early history of our country to understand the nature and importance of American independence. For several years, I have been an admirer of John Quincy Adams (1767 -- 1848) and his long career of over fifty years of service in high government positions. Adams service as a diplomat. as Secretary of State, as the sixth president of the United States (1825 -- 1829), and, after his presidency as a Congressman from Massachusetts. Adams combined his career with a great deal of writing and reflection.
This book "John Quincy Adams: Speeches and Writings" (2025) includes twenty-one writings of JQA from throughout his career. The volume will give the patient reader an overview of JQA's work and thought. The book is part of the Library of America series, which aims to present much of what is valuable in American writing and includes, especially, a long series of works about the Founders and about American history. David Waldstreicher, Dinstinguished Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, edited the volume. He wrote an Introduction together with introductions to each of the twenty-one entries placing them in their historical context. The book includes an extensive chronology of JQA's life, and detailed notes on the texts and on references within the texts. This apparatus will help readers with the book and also will be useful to scholars. Waldstreicher has also edited a two-volume edition in the LOA of selections from JQA's diary, a celebrated work of American letters in its own right.
Adams was highly intelligent and erudite. He was a patriot who loved and saw the promise of the United States while also criticizing it. He aimed to be independent, a man of the entire country rather than a partisan politician. His view of American nationalism developed over his long life, as Walstreicher emphasizes. In his years in the House, JQA became a passionate critic of slavery and believed it would lead to the end of the Union or to civil war.
The writings in this volume explore broad themes of American nationalism and American history including the meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Adams was not only an abstract thinker. He was deeply emeshed in the politics of his day and his writings reflect his views on issues and personalities of the time. Waldstreicher's editorial contributions thus are invaluable in placing the writings in context. JQA wrote and spoke beautifully, but the style and length of these works often require staying power. He was known late in life as "Old Man Eloquent". But Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "[JQA] is no literary gentlemen but a bruiser, and loves the melee". Both "Old Man Eloquent" and the "bruiser" are on display in this volume.
The twenty-one selections are arranged chronologically from 1787, an address upon JQA's graduation from Harvard through 1843, a letter on Abolition. The texts include public speeches, Congressional and presidential speeches, newspaper articles, letters, and more. The volume should be read through in order, if possible. The most accessible parts of the volume are the Fourth of July orations JQA delivered, as did many other public figures. These orations set out his understandings of American nationalism for a broad public audience. This volume includes JQA's Fourth of July orations of 1793 (no. 4), 1821 (no. 10), and 1831 (no 15), Probably the fullest statement of JQA's thought is in the lecture "The Jubilee of the Constitution" delivered in 1839 (no. 19). Another public oration is dated December 22, 1802, commemorating the landing at Plymouth Rock (no. 5). One of the best known, humorous moments in the volume involves JQA's 1828 speech at the dedication of the C & O Canal where he ceremonially put his shovel in the earth but hit a rock instead. (no 14)
JQA's father, John Adams, died on July 4, 1826, and his famous last words were "Independence Forever". Here is JQA echoing and expanding upon his father in the conclusion of his Fourth of July oration of 1831.
"In the course of nature, the voice which now addresses you, must soon cease to be heard upon earth. Life and all which it inherits, lose of their value as it draws towards its close. But for most of you, my friends and neighbors, long and many years of futurity are yet in store. May they be years of freedom --years of prosperity -- years of happiness, ripening for immortality! But, were the breath which now gives utterance to my feelings, the last vital air I should draw, my expiring words to you and your children should be, INDEPENDENCE AND UNION FOREVER!"
JQA is a wonderful companion and guide in thinking about American independence and purpose during this 250th anniversary year.
World War II Memoirs: The European Theater
Elizabeth Samet, editor
Library of America
https://www.loa.org
9781598537857, $45.00 hc / $21.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/World-War-II-Memoirs-European/dp/1598537857
European Theater Memoirs In The Library Of America
In 2022, the Library of America published "World War II Memoirs: the Pacific Theater" consisting of the memoirs of three young Americans who served in the Pacific Theater during WW II. Elizabeth D. Samet, Professor of English at West Point, edited the volume and wrote a lengthy Introduction. Then, in 2024, the Library of America and Samet followed-up the earlier collection with this volume, "World War II Memoirs: The European Theater" which consists of the memoirs of five young Americans who served in Europe: Charles MacDonald, J. Glenn Gray, Mary Lee Settle, Elmer Bendiner, and James Harden Daugherty. Samet again wrote a detailed Introduction together with detailed biographical notes on each of the five memoirists and notes on the texts. Both volumes offer thoughtful, varied ways to think about WW II and American participation from the standpoint of individuals each of whom only saw a small portion of the action and recollected it, sometimes years later.
Samet's introduction explores the nature of the military memoir from ancient times to the present. She points out that the five memoirs in this collection, part of hundreds that had been written about WW II, reveal that "desperate battles funeral pyres, failed hopes, and a constellation of related terrors dominated WW II as thoroughly as they had the wars of antiquity." Unlike some other wars, earlier and later, WW II came to be regarded as "The Good War", which as Samet writes" waged as it was against the unambiguous evils of fascism remade the country and the world." Each of the five memoirs in this collection explore the fear and terrors of battle from an individual perspective which again in Samet's words, are "deeply reflective and rarely facile." The memoirs may be read individually, but there is much to be gained by reading them together in this volume to consider the thoughts and experiences of five individuals.
With my background in philosophy, the book that attracted me to this volume was J. Gleen Gray's memoir, "The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle." Gray (1913 -- 1977) received his PhD in philosophy from Columbia University on the same day he received his draft notice. He would become a friend and a scholar of both Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Gray served in counterintellignece during the war and had the opportunity to interview many Germans and many civilians. He wrote his memoir in 1959, drawing in part on notes and on letters he had written during the war. His book describes and reflects upon his military experiences and on the ethical issues with the "total war" that was WW II. Gray describes himself as a "brokenhearted idealist" and offers philosophical and religious perspectives on how humankind might try to right itself and move forward after the war.
Charles B. MacDonald's memoir, "Company Commander" offers a different perspective. MacDonald (1922 -- 1990) became the Captain of infantry units at a young age and worried about his courage, his military competence, and about whether his soldiers would accept his leadership. He led Company I of the Second Division through the Battle of the Bulge where he received recognition for his heroism and also received a Purple Heart. After recovering from a wound he led Company G of the Second division for the remainder of the War as it advanced through Germany and Czechoslovakia. MacDonald's account is still used in leadership courses at West Point. What I most liked about the book was the affection and regard with which MacDonald held his troops and others associated with his command. MaDonald would later work for the Office of Military History and would write several historical volumes of WW II together with other works.
Mary Lee Settle (1918 -2005) was an American novelist who received the National Book Award in 1978 for her novel "Blood Tie". She served for about thirteen months in the British Woman's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a radio operator in an airfield control tower, and she described her experiences in her memoir, "All The Brave Promises:Memories of Aircraft Woman 2nd Class 2146391" published in 1966. Her memoir has a strongly literary style as she describes some of the horrors of her service, including witnessing a decapitation. She also focuses on the class structure she experience during her service and wrote to commemorate the "thousands of unknown, plodding people, caught up in a deadening authority, learning to survive by keeping 'quiet', by 'getting by.' by existing 'in secret." underground, conscripted, shunted, numbered" and to memorialize their contribution to the war effort.
Elmer Bendiner (1916 -- 2001) served in the Air Force as a navigator on board the B-17 bomber "Tondelayo" and flew 25 combat missions, the maximum permitted, in 1943. He describes his harrowing, dangerous experiences in his memoir "The Fall of Fortresses: A Personal Account of the most Daring -- and Deadly -- American Air Battles of WW II. " In addition to describing his combat experience, Bendiner, as does Glenn Gray, has a philosophical bent. He explores "strategic bombing" in which the United States unremittingly bombed cities in Germany, both military and nonmilitary targets, and considers its military effectiveness, which he finds dubious, and its ethics. Bendiner also discusses his relationship to his wife and child back in the United States and to his mistresses while in the service. It is a thoughtful, fascinating book. Bendiner went on to a career in journalism after the war and wrote several additional books, including, intriguingly, "The Bowery Man" (1961) a study of Skid Row in New York City.
The final memoir in this collection is "The Buffalo Saga" by James Harden Daugherty (1923 -- 2015). Daugherty was drafted age 19 in 1943 and served in the "Buffalo Divison" which was made up of Black enlisted men and was one of the few black units to see combat. Daugherty's memoir describes, from the perspective of the Black soldier, the terrors of combat. He begins his memoir by listing four "miracles" events in which he narrowly escaped death and returns to develop these and other incidents in the course of the memoir. Daughtery's memoir describes the particular experience of the Black soldier including the question which haunted him throughout: "Why should I fight abroad for freedom even as I am denied freedom at home?" Daugherty first wrote his memoir in 1947 after discussing his experience with a fellow Black soldier and realizing he felt the need to "write about it, write about it, write about it." He failed to find a publisher for his work until, in 2007 with encouragement from his wife, he edited and self-published his manuscript and expressed the hope that "The Buffalo Saga, because of its soul and spirit must and shall for perpetuity be a major player for the thrust for benevolence." Because of the difficulty Daughterty had in publishing his memoir, it is especially valuable to have it preserved, with four of its companions, in this Library of America volume.
This book "World War II Memoirs: The European Theater" is an outstanding contribution to the Library of America in its efforts to capture the best of American writing, experience, and thought.
Haunted by the Civil War: Cultural Testimony in the Nineteenth Century United States
Shirley Samuels
Princeton University Press
https://www.press.princeton.edu
9780691248578, $32.00 hc / $17.60 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Civil-War-Testimony-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0691248575
Princeton University Press
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691248578/haunted-by-the-civil-war
How The Civil War Haunts America
Does the Civil War haunt America? If so, why? Shirley Samuels, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University, poses and explores these questions in her erudite, provocative book, Haunted by the Civil War.
Samuels expands upon her questions in the book's Introduction, where she writes: "why does a series of often inchoate battles fought more than 160 years ago continue to be debated as though the victory or loss contained something like the soul of the country?" (1) Part of Samuels' answer involves the unprecedented scale of death resulting from the war. But she also explores the tension between the war and why it was fought and the character of the developing American democracy. She sees, properly, the Civil War as having an expansive scope closely tied to Reconstruction, westward expansion, both before and after the conflict, the genocide, in Samuels' terms, perpetuated on the Indian tribes, and the changing roles of women and the rise of feminism. These and other issues often run together in the book.
The content of the book also is broad ranging. Samuels discusses early expansionist policies in the United States, including the Creek Wars, the Mexican American War, the various attempted compromises over slavery, the events in "bleeding" Kansas, and other events leading to the war. She also discusses the Dakota War of 1862 and the largest mass execution in American history. which occurred on December 26, 1862 at Mankato, Minnesota, with the hanging of 39 Sioux Indians for their role in the Dakota Uprising.
The book consists of a lengthy Introduction, five chapters, an afterword and extensive substantive endnotes with references to many secondary literary and historical sources. The book is a cultural history and examines responses to the Civil War in the literature and art of the Nineteenth Century. It examines familiar sources and figures, including Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain as well as writers many readers will find less familiar.
The book considers novels, speeches, articles, and poetry. It also considers art and photography, with long reflections on the latter art and on the unique ways it focused attention on the Civil War. The book includes 18 historically-themed illustrations, many of which receive extended commentary and are among the most fascinating parts of the study. For example, in her Introduction, Samuels shows a photograph of a set of grim iron "Manacles" recovered after the fall of Richmond (21) and returns to comment on their significance throughout the book.
Samuels sets out her project at length in the book's Introduction and in a section near the end of the study titled "Final Thoughts" (146-150). The first chapter of the book, "Visions of Democracy," discusses Whitman's poetry, but its focus is on historical sources and about how tensions over slavery, race, and land ownership challenged the development of democratic ideals and continue to do so.
The second chapter, "Poetry and War" discusses poems by Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville, including Melville's short poem "Shiloh" from his collection of poetry "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" (1866) with its emphasis on the death and suffering caused by battle. "What like a bullet can undeceive?" (56), Melville asks in "Shiloh." The chapter also includes lengthy meditations on Lincoln based upon Lincoln's own writing and on Whitman's poetry including his elegy on the death of Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Bloom'd."
The third chapter, "Democratic Mourning," is the first of two chapters devoted to women's writing and to what Samuels calls "the haunted aftereffects of war." (9) The chapter discusses familiar works by Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe, but the focus is on a novel by Elizabeth Stewart Phelps, "The Gates Ajar" (1868), a story about loss, grievance, and religious faith following the events of Bleeding Kansas.
Chapter four, "The Republic of Men at Sea," focuses on the Mississippi River and its role in the Civil War, following its flow from North to South. Samuels discusses the portrayal of the river and its history in two works: Mark Twain's memoir "Life on the Mississippi" (1883) and Herman Melville's novel "The Confidence Man" (1857). Samuels contrasts the lives of slavery and economic huckstering with the life of free people, leaving land behind to navigate the waters of the Mississippi.
The book's final chapter, "Women at Home." returns to literature written by women emphasizing the rise of feminism and changing concepts of domestic life. Samuels works to relate the rise of feminism to reflections on the casualties of war. The authors considered include Charlotte Perkins, Harriet Jacobs, Lucy Larcom, and Frances Harper. Among the works considered is Larcom's short poem "Weaving" (1862), which beautifully ties in the work of a young woman in a New England textile mill with reflections upon the work of enslaved women in the southern states harvesting the cotton for the mills.
"Haunted by the Civil War" is an ambitious study which is itself haunted by the cultural history it recounts. The writing style of the book is often dense, and the book will probably be of most interest to an academic audience. Still the book succeeds in its aim of showing how American life and culture, in the Nineteenth Century and beyond, remain "haunted" by the ghosts of the Civil War and by the tension between democracy and slavery.
This review was published on the Blog of Emerging Civil War (ECW) on January 15, 2026 and is used with permission.
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Suanne Schafer's Bookshelf
The Last Outlaws: The Desperate Final Days of the Dalton Gang
Tom Clavin
St. Martin's Press
https://www.stmartins.com
9781250282392, $12.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaws-Desperate-Final-Dalton-ebook/dp/B0BQGJ5ZTM
Tom Clavin brings to life another episode in the American Wild West during the late nineteenth century, this time focusing on the Daltons. The Last Outlaws deals with the Dalton gang (later becoming the Doolin-Dalton gang) that cut a reign of terror from Kansas and Oklahoma all the way to California. After the Civil War, these disaffected confederate soldiers became desperados, starting with horse thievery and moved hard core crime - and murder. The Dalton brothers (Bob, Gratton, and Emmett) along with an ever-changing string of gang members, held up trains and banks, culminating in their attempt in October 1892, to pull off two simultaneous bank robberies in Coffeyville. The townsfolk of the village came together spontaneously to defeat the gang, leaving only one brother alive.
Clavin deftly handles a huge cast of characters including the various gang members, their families, and the lawmen who tried to bring them down. He makes minor detours into the lives of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang and other desperados. The book is well-researched and does a good job of capturing the milieu of the death of the Wild West.
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
Anchor
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books
9780385537087, $12.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Boys-Novel-Colson-Whitehead-ebook/dp/B07J489X7H
The Nickel Boys, a multi-award winning novel (Pulitzer Prize, Kirkus Prize, National Book Award Nominee, etc etc etc), deserves every accolade. It is based on events that occurred in a reform school in Tennessee that for 111 years abused and neglected boys sentenced there for often minor infractions. The reform school is akin to the residential schools to which Native Americans were sent to "kill the native but save the man," complete with a secret graveyard of unmarked graves.
Elwood Curtis, a young Black with a promising future, is sent there simply for being hitchhiking and picked up by a Black man who had stolen a car. Once at the Nickel Academy, Elwood learns an infinite series of new definitions of Hell. Though the abuse is horrific, author Whitehead wisely lets the reader's imagination supply most of the brutal details. Whitehead uses the lives of Elwood and his best friend Turner to illustrate the devastating repercussions that echo through the lives of the boys who manage to survive.
The prose is stark, haunting, and utterly heartbreaking. It stirred an anger within me that Jim Crow America still exists on so many levels and that racism is so deeply institutionalized in America.
Illusion of Truth (A Detective Emily Hunter Mystery Book 3)
James L'Etoile
Oceanview Publishing
https://oceanviewpub.com
9781608096503, $11.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Truth-Detective-Hunter-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0F638PQ4P
In Illusion of Truth, the third in the Detective Emily Hunter mystery series, author James L'Etoile continues the story of Emily Hunter as she solves a crime spree that affects her - and someone she loves - directly. One of the things I like best about this series is that Emily, like so many people in the real world, is juggling an aging mother with dementia, a budding romantic relationship, and her emotionally and physically grueling work as a Sacramento, California, police detective.
When lured to a targeted attack on a church, her boyfriend, Brian, sustains multiple injuries, including a traumatic brain injury. Emily and Brian must rethink their relationship in light of the changes his injuries bring to their world. Wanting to catch those who hurt him, Emily persists in investigating, despite being too close to be objective.
L'Etoile uses years of experience within the criminal justice system to provide verisimilitude to the story. The presumed "bad guy" switches dramatically from moment to moment as Emily relies on instinct to help her piece together clues into a coherent picture. Though the cast of major characters in the three books remains the same, Illusion of Truth can be read as a standalone, but I've enjoyed seeing the progression of Emily's character and the relationships in her life by reading the novels sequentially.
Midwives
Chris Bohjalian
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9781400032976, $9.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Midwives-Vintage-Contemporaries-Chris-Bohjalian-ebook/dp/B000QCSAD6
As a physician, I enjoy reading books dealing with medical issues and/or medical ethics, especially if the author gets the "medical stuff" right without too many glaring errors. In Midwives, author Bohjalian does just that. He takes an experienced midwife, Sibyl Danforth, and places her at the heart of a perfect storm in a home birth where things can't possibly get worse. A storm isolates the house she and the mother-to-be are in - no phone, her own car stranded in a snowbank, no safe roads in or out. When complications develop and the mother dies, Sibyl is faced with a moral decision: save the baby with an emergency Caesarean section or let it die along with the mother. Her decision leads to her arrest for practicing medicine without a license (with the possibility of a fine) and possible murder charges (with the possibility of jail time). The suspense builds as Sybil seems increasingly guilty - even doubting herself and her clinical acumen toward the end of her trial.
The story is told in two points of view, that of Connie, Sibyl's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the journal entries of Sibyl herself. Bohjalian does an excellent job capturing the voice of a teenager, the twixt-and-between of being a child yet a young adult and her fear of the consequences of her mother's actions on her family life. An excellent book on medical issues and a woman's right to choose where and how to birth her child.
Winter Loon
Susan Donovan Bernhard
https://www.susanbernhard.com
Little A
https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/little-a.html
9781503957978, $24.95 hc / $4.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Loon-Novel-Susan-Bernhard/dp/1503902986
Knowing that Susan Bernhard has a new book (Westerly) coming out on June 1, 2026, I decided to reread her marvelous debut novel, Winter Loon, before reading the new one.
In Winter Loon, Wes Ballott watches his mother die in a frozen lake in Minnesota. After that horror, he is abandoned by his father and forced to live with his chain-smoking, alcoholic bitter maternal grandparents who kept his mother's room unchanged for years - hiding truths better left buried - but can't open their hearts to her son.
Everyone Wes comes into contact is the worst possible role model for a parentless child, yet somehow he finds just the right person to help him heal and move on. Despite the stark emptiness of his life, Wes nearly finds a "real" family when he starts seeing a Native American girl. Eventually he loses even her but has a chance to form another family. Wes's growth from adolescence to manhood is extraordinary, heart-breaking, yet inspiring.
A brilliantly-written coming-of-age story, Winter Loon has taut yet lyrical prose, words which one doesn't expect from a debut author, that put me in mind of Louise Erdrich. I particularly enjoyed Bernhard's recurrent use of the winter loon, weather, nature, and Native American myths to reflect and contrast with her characters.
Winter Loon is not a vapid read, but underlying the central dread and misery, an uplifting redemption filters through like sunshine through leaves, much like that of Demon in Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Watching Wes become a better person than anyone in his dysfunctional family is haunting and magical. Several times, though moved to tears, I was forced to continue reading Bernhard's elegant prose.
The Woman Who Painted the Seasons
Penny Fields-Schneider
https://pennyfields-author.com
PFS Publishing
9781922747112, $29.99 hc / $8.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Who-Painted-Seasons-biographical/dp/1922747114
Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-woman-who-painted-the-seasons-penny-fields-schneider/1146138511
I enjoy reading about art and artists (especially women artists and their struggles for recognition in the male-oriented art world), so I was particularly drawn to this book. The Woman Who Painted the Seasons is the fictional biography of Lena Krassner (who renames herself Lee Krasner), the "anchor baby" of a Jewish family that immigrated from Ukraine. From an early age, she determines to become an artist, and this book follows her from her endeavors beginning in high school in the 1920s and her progress through various art professors in multiple New York art schools.
Early on, the language seems overly simplistic, and there isn't a lot going on other than class work, so I nearly abandoned the book. However, knowing Krasner would eventually intersect with - and marry - Jackson Pollack, the Abstract Expressionist artist, I persisted.
The book is clearly well-researched and reveals the careers of both Krasner (who managed Pollack's work and later his estate) and Pollack in detail. Pollack is an alcoholic who becomes abusive when drunk - which becomes most of the time. Krasner, though, believes in his genius and persists in managing his career while trying to controlling his alcohol consumption. Her drive to become an artist recognized as an equal to any male artist is often submerged beneath her attempts to stabilize Pollack. Their relationship slowly destabilizes, and the story becomes quite intense as Fields-Schneider documents Pollack's abuse and Krasner's willingness to endure it. Eventually, she leaves him. Her own success comes considerably after Pollack's but is well-deserved.
I have studied art myself and have a more-than-passing knowledge of contemporary art and knew most of the paintings and artists mentioned. That said, you can read and enjoy the story without having a background on the subject. I'd rate the first third of the book at a 3 and the rest at a 5, averaging to a 4, but it's worth persisting to watch Krasner arise to the top of her field.
Brenda Barker's Next Chapter
Wendy Tokunaga
https://www.wendytokunaga.com
Blydyn Square Books
https://blydynsquarebooks.com
9798218774769, $12.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Brenda-Barkers-Chapter-Wendy-Tokunaga-ebook/dp/B0FYJMM82D
After her husband's death, the protagonist of Brenda Barker's Next Chapter, Brenda decides to write the book her spouse, Maynard, always disparaged. She married him, a rodeo cowboy turned construction worker, because he offered stability. Now, he's dead, their only child and his Japanese wife are moving to Japan, and Brenda finds herself at a crossroads. She takes a chance and signs up for the Sky Ridge Writer's conference in California wine company and submits her novel about a chef named Clementine who communes with ancient goddesses from three different cultures.
Brenda Barker's Next Chapter is a such fun read! Overall, it is gently humorous with some real laugh-out-loud moments. It's a second-chance at life story stirred with a bit of romance and a bit of thriller. Tokunaga does a perfect job of not only capturing Brenda's naivety about the world of publishing, the necessity for a social media following, etc, but also her general ingenuousness about the world and her personal convictions and strengths. As an author who published her first work at 66, I thoroughly enjoyed identified with Brenda.
Minor Black Figures
Brandon Taylor
Riverhead Books
https://www.penguin.com/riverhead-overview
9780593332382, $14.99
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Minor-Black-Figures-Brandon-Taylor-ebook/dp/B0DZG85Z12
Minor Black Figures is an interesting blend of politics, art, and LGBTQI issues. Wyeth, a young Black artist, was raised by a distant White mother and absent Black father. He worries constantly about how people perceive him and his art. He's having trouble painting and can't break out of that inability to produce. He's working two part-time jobs as an art restorer and in a gallery to make ends meet during a NYC summer while sharing a studio with several other artists. He meets a young white man, Keating, a former Jesuit priest, and they have a rather sweet love affair during which Wyeth slowly opens up.
This is not a rapid-fire book, but a slowly developing story that is well worth pursuing. There is a lot of art criticism where, which I found somewhat boring, but I was fascinated by the look at the black gaze versus the white gaze, and how "the black gaze had been shaped and colonized and turned against itself, splintered and doubled, so that every black field of view held within it some secret, invisible second dimension." And "[t]hat was one of the more insidious aspects of racism, and white supremacy broadly, the way it could give you a tiny white man in your mind to argue with constantly all the way up and down until you died never having had a single thought that was not either about whiteness or a reaction to whiteness, and that it could make even the undulations of your own subjectivity something to suspect and interrogate." I really found these ideas interesting and have continued to think about them long after finishing the book.
Suanne Schafer, Reviewer
www.SuanneSchaferAuthor.com
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
Moss Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom & Modern Pharmacology
Robert Dale Rogers, RH(AHG)
Healing Arts Press
c/o Inner Traditions
https://www.innertraditions.com
9798888500996, $29.99 pbk / $20.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Moss-Medicine-Indigenous-Wisdom-Pharmacology/dp/B0F1LQY249
Synopsis: A comprehensive illustrated guide to bryophytes, Moss Medicine explores more than 600 species of the bryophyte family of plants - mosses, liverworts, and hornworts - in text and full-color photos.
In this comprehensive book, master herbalist Robert Dale Rogers reveals the unique healing benefits of bryophytes - the family of plants that includes mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. These plants are some of the oldest on our planet, and recently they have been recognized by science for their antiviral, antimicrobial, and anti-cancer properties.
Bryophytes have no vascular tissue and no roots. Found on all continents in a wide range of climates, they survive - and thrive - by extracting moisture and nutrients directly from the air. Using full-color photographic examples, Rogers presents more than 600 species of bryophytes through the lenses of ethnobotany, folklore, chemistry, and pharmacology, and he shares their healing applications in homeopathy and aromatherapy.
Rogers explains how Indigenous people all over the world have used bryophytes for millennia for food preservation, clothing, insulation, and medicine. He then compares the three types of bryophytes with scientific research on the medicinal effects of their chemical compounds, showing that mosses, liverworts, and hornworts can be used in herbal preparations, homeopathic remedies, and essential oils for common ailments.
He also explains that bryophytes have environmental benefits, such as in the sequestration of carbon and the phyto-remediation of our increasingly polluted planet, revealing how these ancient plants have supported humanity for eons - and, fortunately for us, continue to do so.
Critique: Illustrated with full color photography throughout, Moss Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom & Modern Pharmacology explores how both ancient traditions and modern medical practice have used the bryophyte family of plants (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts, known for their lack of vascular tissue or roots). More than 600 species of bryophytes are presented, from scientific, botanical, chemical, and folklore perspectives. Their medicinal uses are discussed, from modern pharmacological practices, to alternative medicine practices outside the boundaries of established medicine such as homeopathic remedies and essential oils. Thoroughly accessible to lay readers and scholars alike, Moss Medicine also includes an extensive list of references for further study. It should be noted for personal reading lists that Moss Medicine is also available in a Kindle edition ($20.99).
Blade
Wendy Walker
Thomas & Mercer
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662531927, $28.99, HC, 303pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Wendy-Walker/dp/1662531923
Synopsis: Ana Robbins was an Olympic star in the making -- until tragedy forced her to leave that world behind. At the age of sixteen, she gave up her dream and never looked back. Fourteen years later, she's a successful defense attorney, revered for her work with minors. But when her former coach turns up dead, Ana lands right back where it all began, and abruptly ended: The Palace, a world-renowned skating facility nestled high in the mountains of Colorado.
Ana returns to The Palace to defend Grace Montgomery -- the young skater accused of the brutal crime. Despite her claims of innocence, all evidence points squarely at Grace's guilt, and she's days away from facing charges of first-degree murder.
But Ana's investigation dredges up childhood memories of her own, triggering the fear that permeates this place where she once lived and trained far from home as an "Orphan". With a blizzard raging outside, and time running out for Grace, Ana is determined to uncover the truth --- even if it means exposing her own secrets that she buried here long ago.
Critique: A deftly crafted novel of psychological suspense, "Blade" by Wendy Walker is an extraordinarily fascinating read from start to finish. Showcasing Walker's impressive flair for the kind of storytelling style that is character and narrative driven, "Blade" will prove to be an immediate and enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of suspense/thriller fans that this hardcover edition of "Blade" from Thomas & Mercer is also readily available in paperback (9781662531910, $12.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $4.99).
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
HINENU: Israel at Ten Million
David Shlachter
Gefen Publishing House
c/o Storch
www.gefenpublishing.com
9789657864258, $76.23, HC, 248pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/HINENU-Israel-at-Ten-Million/dp/9657864259
Synopsis: The country of Israel has now reached a population of 10 million. Within months of hitting this milestone, Israel released its first census in 15 years, outlining the demographics of these10 million people by gender, age, religion, location, and place of origin.
American photographer David Shlachter traveled throughout Israel to document the population at this landmark, capturing portraits and human stories from a sample of 100 people who proportionally reflect the overall demographics of the country. All portraits and stories were captured during the October 7th War, providing unique insight into the nuanced experiences of people living through a period of intense conflict.
Critique: "HINENU: Israel at Ten Million" from the Gefen Publishing House is a large format (12.6 x 9.45 x 1.18 inches, 2.72 pounds) hardcover compendium showcasing 100 full color, full page photos of Israeli men and women accompanied by their succinct biographies. An original, unique, fascinating and informative volume, compiled and edited by David Shlachter, "HINENU: Israel at Ten Million" is an extraordinary and and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Israel History and Contemporary Photojournalism collections.
Editorial Note: Dave Shlachter (www.hinenubook.com/pages/author.html) is able to engage people across vastly different backgrounds (from bus drivers to government ministers) and uncover the values, pressures, and beliefs that shape their decisions. On the surface, Israel looks like one big conflict. People all over the world feel extremely strong emotions toward the country, though most have never traveled there, do not know anyone who lives there, and have limited understanding of the texture of people's lives there. To fill this gap, Dave first studied portrait photography for several years (winning several awards along the way), and then moved with his young family to Tel Aviv specifically to find, interview, and photograph 100 residents of Israel, focusing purely on human stories that provide a window into their lived reality. This work has been the most rewarding and fulfilling of Dave's life, opening up deep wells of empathy for the incredibly diverse set of people who call Israel home.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
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