Reviews
A smoke-ringed mirror
Elizabeth Stice reviews House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home by John T. Edge (Crown Publishing, 2025).
It’s Complicated
Elizabeth Stice reviews Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth (Thesis, 2025).
A Feral Child and the Fringes of Human Knowledge
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron by Roger Shattuck, with introduction by Jed Perl (New York Review of Books, 2025).
Don’t Buy This Jacket… Do Read This Book?
Elizabeth Stice reviews Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away by David Gelles (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
A new book about Kant: not imperative, but interesting reading
Elizabeth Stice reviews Kant: A Revolution in Thinking by Marcus Willaschek (Harvard University Press, 2025)
Katabasis: Impossible to Pronounce, Enjoyable to Read
Elizabeth Stice reviews Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, 2025).
The many men, so beautiful!/ And they all dead did lie:/ And a thousand thousand slimy things/Lived on; and so did I.
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Killing Season: The Autumn of 1914, Ypres, and the Afternoon That Cost Germany The War by Robert Cowley (Random House, 2025)
World War II and the Fight for Freedom
Elizabeth Stice reviews 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche (Basic Books, 2025)
Not a Road to Nowhere
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks by Fred Haefele (Bison Books, 2025).
A Contest for the Ages: Deciphering Cuneiform
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Have Memoir and Geiger Counter, Will Travel
Elizabeth Stice reviews Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance by Joe Dunthorne (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
History underfoot and on display
Elizabeth Stice reviews Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets by Dorothy Armstrong (St. Martin’s Press, 2025)
The Poor Devils
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert Darnton (Belknap Press, 2025)
Look Over There
Elizabeth Stice reviews Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird by Mike Stark (Bison Books, 2025)
Profiles in Service
Elizabeth Stice reviews Who is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis et. al (Riverhead Books, 2025)
Florida surfing, Florida stories
Elizabeth Stice reviews On a Rising Swell: Surf Stories From Florida’s Space Coast by Dan Reiter (University Press of Florida, 2025)
Living on a Dream
Elizabeth Stice reviews Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood (Harmony, 2024)
The Present of the Past
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present by Oswyn Murray (Belknap Press, 2024)
Remembrance of Things Past
Elizabeth Stice reviews On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer by Rick Steves (Hachette, 2025)