BookBrowse Editorial Review
Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis
by Suzanne Cope
(5/7/2025)
Suzanne Cope brings to light a complex facet of an otherwise well-known war in her nonfiction account Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis. But political machinations and military maneuvers are not at the heart of this story. Instead, Cope humanizes the conflict through the experiences of four women who played crucial roles on and off the battlefield, and she shows how women were integral to the fight for freedom and a new political direction in
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
by Aldo Leopold
(1/29/2025)
The problem of removing apex predators like wolves and grizzly bears, and the long destructive march of habitat loss in all North American regions, are chronicled with sadness but loving memories, like in any good eulogy. Leopold was also one of the first writers to capture the paradox of creating parks to conserve wilderness that then becomes overdeveloped and overcrowded: "Parks are made to bring the music to the many, but by the time many are attuned to hear it there is little left but noise.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Mighty Red: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich
(10/2/2024)
Erdrich expertly switches between characters' perspectives and pulls the reader into their inner lives; the effect is never disorienting, but rather provides a 360-degree view of this insular community and its lightly magical realist world. As the tension builds, the reader waits on edge of her seat for the characters to finally face their traumas, whether by confronting what happened the night of the tragedy or by reflecting on even earlier misfortunes and mistakes that led them to their curren
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
by Ferris Jabr
(8/21/2024)
In Becoming Earth, Jabr travels from the rainforest to Siberia, from caves deep within Earth's crust to towers thousands of feet above the surface, and along the way introduces the reader to scientists whose work is awakening humanity to the crucial connections between all living things. We meet cave-diving microbiologists, engineers growing kelp forests for carbon storage, a museum curator studying plastic pollution via autopsies on ocean mammals, and more. The book offers a behind-the-s
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
by Anne Higonnet
(5/15/2024)
With the title Liberty, Equality, Fashion, it may seem like Anne Higonnet's new book is an unserious work—maybe a picture book of dresses from revolutionary France, recalling the refrain of "liberty, equality, fraternity" that dominated in 1789. But this would be an incorrect assumption. An exhaustive history of the French Revolution this is not, but the book masterfully explores the confluence of social, political and economic factors that allowed for a sea change in something as b
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
by Jessica J. Lee
(4/17/2024)
Plants are a lens through which Lee tries to understand her own identity and that of her family. Born to a Welsh father and Taiwanese mother who settled in Canada, she is attuned to the realities of migration and a sense of "otherness" wherever she goes, be that her own home, her parents' birthplaces, or the many places she moved during a peripatetic adulthood. Of herself and her sister she says, "We wear a border in our bodies." Lee weaves together personal stories—of her family's gardens
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Bullet Swallower: A Novel
by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
(3/6/2024)
Is a son responsible for the sins of his father? Is it possible to escape your family's legacy, and can one ever truly right the wrongs of the past? Through evocative text and looping timelines, The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James asks readers these questions in the form of a redemption story that is frightening and fulfilling in equal measure.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades
by Rebecca Renner
(1/10/2024)
There is a sense of some justice perhaps, but the reader is left wondering if Robert or any other poachers will actually change their behavior, or just get better at not getting caught. Despite that disappointment, Gator Country provides an important glimpse into South Florida subcultures, and it dispels myths and simplistic misconceptions about people who live off the land and are just trying to get by. Renner poses probing questions about overzealous development, environmental damage, a
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
by Ben Goldfarb
(9/20/2023)
Figures on deaths and disruptions are disheartening, but the author shows how scientists are actively working on meaningful improvements to help animals and roads better coexist, such as wildlife crossings, from passages in Canada's Banff National Park to the famous Liberty Canyon Overpass in Los Angeles. With its veritable mascot, P-22, a celebrity mountain lion who died of injuries sustained from being hit by a car, this project shows it is possible for humans to enact major infrastructure cha
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
by Tahir Hamut Izgil
(8/23/2023)
Tahir Hamut Izgil's memoir, Waiting to be Arrested at Night, breaks through the complacency surrounding the oppression of the Uyghur people and powerfully reveals the terror of mass persecutions tearing an entire population apart. His poet's voice and lyricism add a dreamlike quality to events that seem too terrifying to be real, and almost too painful to describe.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives
by Naoise Mac Sweeney
(5/17/2023)
The greatest facet of this book is how it encourages readers to consider a more nuanced, interwoven history that, by re-evaluating the past with the full breadth of our knowledge, pays tribute to the very ideals of Western Civilization while broadening what that definition really means.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science
by Kate Zernike
(4/5/2023)
As uplifting as the ending is, this book can be frustrating for younger female readers. The constant self-blame and assuming that double standards were "the way it is" is difficult to accept...But, it's important to remember this isn't a clarion call for how things should be. This is a story of how things were, and the fact that some of the smartest, most accomplished women in the world could struggle to see feminism as anything other than "radical," and would have such deep faith in scientific
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
by Greta Thunberg
(2/15/2023)
The Climate Book's short chapters and its structure—focused on what we know, what we're doing or not doing, and what we must do—make it an easy and challenging read at the same time. Complex subjects are explained quickly and clearly, before the reader can get bogged down in jargon. But the sheer breadth of the climate catastrophe and its multifaceted impact on every sphere of life might leave the reader feeling overwhelmed. The final section includes actionable shifts in beha
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Marriage Portrait: A novel
by Maggie O'Farrell
(10/19/2022)
The structure gives the book the feel of a murder mystery — Will he or won't he do it? What is he capable of? — and the simmering undercurrents of danger draw the reader in, enveloping us in Lucrezia's fear and confusion, but also her intelligence and bravery. By shortening the distance between Lucrezia's lifetime and our own, O'Farrell also makes the risks of succession and reproduction patently clear for modern readers. She provides a glimpse of the terror, pride, hope, danger and
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Bitch: On the Female of the Species
by Lucy Cooke
(8/3/2022)
Not only is Bitch enlightening, but it's also entertaining. Told with verve, humor and plain-language explanations of scientific processes, Cooke's book reads like a travelogue through the still-wild places of the Earth, revealing the complexity of animal life that most of us will never glimpse, and narrated with the tone of a good friend confiding her adventures to the reader. She never hesitates to call out the persistent sexism in academic science, and her rollicking pace and vibrant d
BookBrowse Editorial Review
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
by Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa
(6/8/2022)
The authors' diligence in reporting from those who knew Floyd intimately as well as religious leaders, police officers and scholars creates a seamless narrative of Floyd's life embedded within larger forces of over-incarceration, a lack of job opportunities for those with a criminal record, and ever-present poverty with its associated stress and health damages. Eloquently told and expertly navigating the emotion and polarization that calcified after his murder, His Name Is George Floyd le
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth
by Ben Rawlence
(3/2/2022)
The Treeline is a moving meditation on what climate change truly means for ecosystems and their human inhabitants in a rapidly evolving, ecologically unique part of the world. Rawlence addresses the dislocations and disasters that will ensue, and indeed already have begun, but it isn't with hopeless fatalism. Instead, he ends with a call to action for humans to adapt and survive. Through scientific lessons, anthropological accounts and lyrical language, The Treeline is a valuable addition
BookBrowse Editorial Review
In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters
by Nancy Goldstone
(11/3/2021)
Goldstone, an accomplished popular historian of pre-modern queens, depicts the emotions and tense moments of Maria Theresa's life in accessible prose and delightful details, making the reader feel close to the action and presenting the empress as a relatable, real person. In the Shadow of the Empress shines a well-deserved light on one of the most extraordinary female rulers in European history, and shows that common misconceptions and the fog of time don't have to obscure the lives of me
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age
by Amy Sohn
(9/8/2021)
Sohn recounts the larger-than-life characters Comstock battled, painting a vivid picture of Gilded Age America. There were the activists and questionable grifters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, sisters who spoke and advocated for women's rights including suffrage and sexual equality; Angela and Ezra Heywood, dedicated spouses who promoted free love principles; and Ann Lohman, a New York City abortionist knows as Madame Restell. These stories of the women and men who advocated for socia
BookBrowse Editorial Review
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith
(7/14/2021)
This book's strengths are many, including Smith's mellifluous language and his ability to crystallize the meaning of white supremacy and its effects for Black Americans. The connections he draws both spatially and temporally between the actual lived horrors of slavery and the world as we know it today are both brilliant and vital, as is his emphasis on education and how the teaching of the past is really a reflection of current attitudes, fears and prejudices. How the Word Is Passed shoul
BookBrowse Editorial Review
In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire
by Laurence Bergreen
(4/21/2021)
Bergreen rightly credits Drake and his relationship with the brilliant Elizabeth for the role he played in this drama. Sometimes the author is a little too effusive in his praise — for example, he dismisses every sailor who criticized Drake as a jealous malcontent rather than considering if a money-hungry pirate was perhaps difficult to work with. A more nuanced view of his sources would have improved his analysis overall. But these are minor blemishes in an adventure for the ages that had reper
BookBrowse Editorial Review
God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World
by Alan Mikhail
(8/19/2020)
Mikhail succeeds in capturing the tension and power struggles that marked Selim's accession, but unfortunately misses the opportunity to explain how Orientalism, with its depictions of Muslims and "the East" as inherently illogical, exotic and sinful, was directly related to the existential fears of the Ottomans. Nevertheless, God's Shadow is a refreshing corrective to the literary and historical traditions that portray the Ottomans as weak and inconsequential.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story
by Marie Arana
(9/4/2019)
The multi-layered structure and depth of detail make the book as engrossing as it is informative, and while Arana avoids prescriptions for the future or current policy, her message is clear—exploitation, violence and religion define Latin America, and for change to come, these legacies will require a reckoning that the world has been unprepared thus far to make.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago
by Alex Kotlowitz
(4/17/2019)
In An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago, Alex Kotlowitz patiently takes the reader through the streets, neighborhoods and institutions that are both the cause and the result of ongoing violence. More importantly, he humanizes the problem through personal stories and deep immersion in the lives of real people who have been affected.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
In Byron's Wake: The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's Wife and Daughter: Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace
by Miranda Seymour
(1/9/2019)
In Byron's Wake shines a light on the lives of Lord Byron's wife, Annabella Milbanke, and their daughter, Ada Lovelace, who both spent their lives with his shadow hanging over them. Though there are a few organizational flaws, this book reveals fascinating details about the painful legacy of a disastrous relationship and how these two women chose to define themselves in spite of, or because of it.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
by Shane Bauer
(9/19/2018)
Shane Bauer chose to go undercover as a corrections officer at a for-profit prison in Louisiana, and the result is a damning portrait of the business of incarcerating Americans, and the legacy of racism in the criminal justice system. The juxtaposition of Bauer's experience with the historical chapters provides a rich context, helping the reader to understand how the present system came to be.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England's Merchant Adventurers
by John Butman and Simon Targett PhD
(5/16/2018)
When we think about the founding of America, we typically envision Pilgrims in black garb and boxy hats, sailing bravely to an untouched landscape where they could worship free from persecution. Yet as John Butman and Simon Targett show in New World, Inc., the Pilgrims were far from being trailblazing colonists. The authors bring to life forgotten and overlooked explorers and they demonstrate that profit, not religious freedom, acted as the driving force for colonization.
With
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
by Sarah McBride
(4/18/2018)
McBride's memoir recounts these important social and political shifts, but it's also a personal narrative and a love story—featuring her and the transgender man she fell in love with, Andy Cray. Despite the tragic loss of her husband and the rollback of LGBTQ rights under the Trump administration, McBride maintains her positivity and hope for the future. Significantly, she is aware of her privilege as a white person from the upper socioeconomic strata of society. Because she is aware of her oppo
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon
by Catherine Hewitt
(3/7/2018)
The change in women's place in the art world animates this book, with Valadon an unsung but key figure in that transformation. Hewitt summarizes: "Other artists showed what viewers wanted to see. Suzanne showed them what was true." By not conforming to male expectations of female-created art—a muted color palette, nurturing mothers, cheerful children—Valadon broke barriers for women to create and, crucially, to make a living from the art that expressed their intentions and feelings, not only wha
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
(1/3/2018)
The Leonardo who comes through in this account is a friendly and approachable genius. He appears comfortable with his homosexuality, unlike his contemporary Michelangelo. He's surrounded by students, assistants, and friends throughout his life-the very opposite of the brooding loner trope so often applied to artists. Isaacson does Leonardo a great service by humanizing him, and he clearly admires his subject's genius, which was all the more impressive since Leonardo had very little formal educat
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
by Deborah Campbell
(9/20/2017)
Campbell deftly describes the human cost of war and the repercussions of disastrous policies in Iraq. Her descriptions of Syria are all the more poignant since we know of the destruction that would unfold as a result of the country's civil war a few years later. At times, however, it feels like she justifies her presence in Syria and her use of fixers like Ahlam a little too vehemently, and the account of her unraveling relationship with her boyfriend in the U.S. seems out of place. A