Reviews
As Entrancing as Snowy Egret Feathers
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America’s Birds by James H. McCommons (St. Martin’s Press, 2026)
From the Stacks: Don Welch’s “The Platte River”
Matthew Miller appreciates the writing and localism of Don Welch
Recovering Neutral Ground
Matthew Sparacio reviews Nobody Men: Neutrality, Loyalties, and Family in the American Revolution by Travis Glasson (Yale University Press, 2025)
Analog Intelligence
Elizabeth Stice reviews The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future by Joel J. Miller (Prometheus Books, 2025)
A Boys’ Own Forgotten Front of World War I
Elizabeth Stice reviews Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One by Nick Higham (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Getting Beyond Grit
Elizabeth Stice reviews Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans by Robert J. Sampson (Harvard University Press, 2026)
From the Stacks: A Place on Earth
Jeffrey Bilbro shares about a book he loves which is out of print, the first edition of Wendell Berry’s A Place on Earth.
“The Terminator” as non-fiction
Christian McNamara reviews If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (Little, Brown and Company, 2025).
From the Stacks: Islands and Beaches
From the Stacks: Elizabeth Stice explains what is great about Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a silent land: Marquesas 1774-1880 by Greg Dening (The Dorsey Press, 1980).
Bob Dylan and the Solid Rock
Michael Jimenez reviews Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God by Jeffrey Edward Green (Oxford, 2024)
Always let your imagination be your guide?
Elizabeth Stice reviews Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination by Mark Vernon (Hurst & Co., 2025)
Regarding the Pain of Others in the American Revolution
Matthew Sparacio reviews Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America by Vaughn Scribner (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).
AI? Hard pass. Be human. Read human.
We will not publish reviews or interviews that use AI for any stage of the writing process.
Attention! At Ease! Florida’s Military Role Preceded Disney World
Roger Chapman reviews State of War: A History of World War II in Florida by Anthony D. Atwood (University Press of Florida, 2025)
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).
The Dunnes: Literary Family Royalty
Michael Jimenez reviews The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne (Penguin, 2024).
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).
Composing the Revolution Across the Atlantic
Matthew J Sparacio reviews The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution by Zara Anishanslin (Harvard University Press, 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)