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Andrea Kay's Bookshelf
The World Atlas of Coffee, third edition
James Hoffman
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus Books
https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk
9781784729868, $39.99, HC, 288pp
https://www.amazon.com/World-Atlas-Coffee-3rd-explained/dp/1784729868
Synopsis: This expanded and fully updated 3rd edition of "The World Atlas of Coffee: From beans to brewing - coffees explored, explained and enjoyed" by coffee expert, historian and connoisseur contains new chapters on decaffeination and steep and release brewers, as well as additional origins of note such as Australia, Japan and Puerto Rico.
Coffee has never been better, or more interesting, than it is today. Coffee producers have access to more varieties and techniques than ever before and we, as consumers, can share in that expertise to make sure the coffee we drink is the best we can find. Where coffee comes from, how it was harvested, the roasting process and the water used to make the brew are just a few of the factors that influence the taste of what we drink. Champion barista and coffee expert James Hoffmann examines these key factors, looking at varieties of coffee, the influence of terroir, how it is harvested and processed, the roasting methods used, through to the way in which the beans are brewed.
Country by country - from Bolivia to Zambia - Hoffman identifies key characteristics and the methods that determine the quality of that country's output. Along the way we learn about everything from the development of the espresso machine, to why strength guides on supermarket coffee are really not good news. This is the first study/history to chart the coffee production of over 35 countries, encompassing knowledge never previously published outside the coffee industry.
Critique: This large format (7.75 x 0.97 x 9.25 inches, 2.73 pounds) hardcover 3rd edition of "The World Atlas of Coffee: From beans to brewing - coffees explored, explained and enjoyed" is especially recommended to the attention of anyone who wants to understand more about coffee, its wonderful nuances, and its possibilities. Beautifully and profusely illustrated in full color throughout, "The World Atlas of Coffee: 3rd Edition" is a choice and recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "The World Atlas of Coffee: 3rd Edition is also readily available from Mitchell Beazley in a digital book format (Kindle, $19.99).
Editorial Note: James Hoffmann (https://www.jameshoffmann.co.uk) is the co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, a multi-award-winning coffee roasting company based in East London. He is also the World Barista Champion 2007, having won the UK Barista competition in both 2006 and 2007. He has a YouTube channel with more 2 million subscribers, where he makes videos about anything and everything to do with coffee. He is also the author of How to Make the Best Coffee at Home (2022).
Andrea Kay
Reviewer
Andy Jordan's Bookshelf
The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead
C. Wylie Lenz, Angela Tengas, and Kyle William Bishop, editors
McFarland & Company
https://mcfarlandbooks.com
9781476695808, $49.95, PB, 249pp
https://www.amazon.com/Post-Zombie-Essays-Evolving-Contributions-Studies/dp/1476695806
Synopsis: The living dead have come a long way from the shambling corpses first depicted by George A. Romero. While traditional zombie monsters continue to flourish (thanks in part to the ongoing popularity of The Walking Dead universe) the global community now features reanimated zombies, resurrected zombies, protagonist zombies, robotic zombies, romantic zombies, fake zombies, cartoon zombies, anime zombies, zombie-adjacent monsters, and post-zombie zombies.
Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by the team of academicians C. Wylie Lenz, Angela Tengas, and Kyle William Bishop, "The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead" is a collection of eleven scholarly essays considering recent and contemporary examples of zombies in fiction, literature, popular culture, and politics from around the world and makes the case that, because of the evolution of the undead, the zombie remains an important allegorical feature of horror fiction, satire, and ideological perspectives.
Critique: Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a Preface (A Note from the Undeaditors), and Introduction (Are We Living in a Post-Zombie World Yet?), an Afterword (The Afterword), a four page Filmography, a twelve page Bibliography, a four page listing of the Contributors and their credentials, and a ten page Index. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in Zombies and their manifold impacts on popular culture, "The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead" is a unique and recommended contribution to personal, community, and college/university library collections. It should be noted that this trade paperback edition of "The Post-Zombie: Essays on the Evolving Undead" from McFarland & Company is also readily available for students, academia, and Zombi fans in a digital book format (Kindle, $29.99).
Editorial Note #1: Wylie Lenz is an assistant professor of English in the humanities and social sciences department at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, Florida. (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qFslek0AAAAJ&hl=en)
Editorial Note #2: Angela Tenga is an associate professor at Florida Institute of Technology. Her classes focus on literature, culture, and history, while her research interests include representations of the monstrous, the construction of criminality (especially serial killers) in fiction, and early English literature. (https://www.fit.edu/faculty-profiles/t/tenga-angela)
Editorial Note #2: Kyle William Bishop is a professor of English and film studies and serves as the English department chair at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. He has presented and published on a number of zombie-related texts and has authored two monographs with McFarland. (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RtQqgRIAAAAJ&hl=en)
Andy Jordan
Reviewer
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Borobudur: Masterpiece in Stone
John N. Miksic, author
Anita Tranchini, photographer
Marcello Tranchini, photographer
Tuttle Publishing
www.tuttlepublishing.com
9780804859011, $24.99, PB, 176pp
https://www.amazon.com/Borobudur-Masterpiece-Revised-Buddhist-Monument/dp/0804859019
Synopsis: Borobudur is the largest Buddhist monument in the world -- a masterpiece containing thousands of intricately carved panels and sculptures blending Indian art with local Javanese culture.
The panels retell the lives of the Buddhas along with dozens of other tales of worldly desire and the heroics feats of enlightened beings. After viewing these, visitors ascend to open terraces at the top to enjoy majestic vistas of the surrounding landscape -- an experience deliberately designed to evoke the eternal bliss of Buddhist nirvana.
With the publication of this newly updated and expanded third edition of "Borobudur: Masterpiece in Stone: The History and Meaning Behind the World's Largest Buddhist Monument" the reader is presented with a detailed history of the monument as well as a description of its art and design.
Author John Miksic informatively recounts Borobudur's history from its construction in the 9th century to its rediscovery in the 19th century and multiple restorations by the Dutch colonial government, the Indonesian Government and UNESCO in the 20th century. Surveying ancient Javanese texts and contemporary scholarship, Miksic effectively walks the reader through the temples main features, honing in on important details.
Critique: An absolutely recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Buddhist Art & Architecture collections, this large format () trade paperback edition of "Borobudur: Masterpiece in Stone: The History and Meaning Behind the World's Largest Buddhist Monument" from Tuttle Publishing is truly extraordinary, impressively informative, and a simply fascinating volume to browse and read through magnificent image and one informative page at a time.
Editorial Note #1: John N. Miksic is an archaeologist born in the USA, and who has lived in Southeast Asia since 1968. He has written numerous books on Indonesian sites and artifacts. (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/710674.John_N_Miksic)
Editorial Note #2: Anita and Marcello Tranchini are also the photographers for John N. Miksci's "Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas" (Tuttle Publishing, 2017)
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Chike Nzerue's Bookshelf
Tips to Help You Do Your Best
Mark Carlson
Tupelo Pess
https://www.tupelopress.org
9781961209343, $19.95
Summary & Context:
Mike Carlson is a poet who uses the defamiliarization of the familiar themes is to explore deep truths in a seamless twist of language. Throughout the book, he indulges in elegant word-play, subversive wit and innovative experimentation. His poems are full of vivid imagery that seduces the reader to live in the world of his continuous search for imaginative success as a teacher, husband poet, and son. In so doing he traverses like a troubadour, the lines between courage & wisdom; irony & truth, and in so doing challenges the reader to be attuned to inevitability of loss. His poems in this collection challenges the reader to re-assess what poetry is; what poetry can do and in so doing defies those who posit that "Poetry makes nothing happen."
Themes & Ideas:
1.The opening poem draws the reader in with a cascade of irony and affirmations that cover several themes:
"It's early still. As long as you are alive and well..."And soon after proceeds to celebrate grit, paraphrasing Confucius who said that to" break mountains, you remove bits of stone," in the lines:
"Otherwise stones line a broken hillside..."
This proem ends with a surprising twist that the " end of the day should be something you can draw in detail, like a pine cone.."
2. Loss/Death: He covers the theme of death and dying in the hospice poem, and laments that "stores don't sell the thing a dying person needs, including " bicycles to assemble in the darkness..."
3. Experimentation:
Many poems show lyric play and experimentation, as in the Gross Cove poem, where he asks the reader to:
"Picture an anorexic butterfly being operated on by a maple leaf holding a scalpel..."
"If I ever become an aronist, for instance,
I will concentrate mostly on lighthouses..."
4. Comedy & Wit:
There are several examples of comedy, wit and irony in the poems. In the poem "Ways Out of An Apple Orchard," he argues that " I don't need a farmhand to tell me I'm a dud..."
In the poem about a man hitting a golf balls into a cemetery, he questions whether the man is trying to get better at golf or worse at life...
In the poem " A Diagram of Inca Road System", he poses a question for the high priest:
"I'll ask the high priest what a douche bag is.
I know the moon is not one."
5. Nostalgia, Abstractions, & Why he writes Poetry..
In Connoisseurship for Aficionados, he addresses why he writes poetry, implying that his poems are a work in progress... Just a record of what he had to go on... His subject matter includes shadow, nostalgia, he feels as though his life and his work are sisters fighting over who gets to read the magazine at the doctor's office...
Poets Craft:
There is strong poetic voice that alternates between that of teacher & student; and retains a knack for wonder, with flourishes of mastery along the way. There is ample use of word play, alliteration and metaphors: in one poem comparing his line length & integrity as two parts of a tombstone; In More Honest Opinion," he says:
The forest will buzz
With the asthma of wheezing deer...
Many poems end with surprises like "More Honest Opinion..."
"The problem with dumb motherfuckers is they think
Just 'cause they notice something it means that its new..."
Conclusion:
I recommend this book for those who enjoy work that catalogues a poet's struggle with the art form; it is a joyful ride into inventive word play. The poems document his ardent striving for wisdom and makes familiar truths surprising; including ways in which one learns to find peace with loss, and love from the space of student and teacher.
Chike Nzerue
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
The Grave Artist
Jeffrey Deaver & Isabella Maldonado
www.jefferydeaver.com
www.isabellamaldonado.com
Thomas & Mercer
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662518751, $28.99, HC, 396pp
https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Artist-Sanchez-Heron/dp/1662518757
Synopsis: A wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of one of the newlyweds. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude something far more sinister is at play.
The two uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level. Dubbed the Honeymoon Killer, this man isn't interested in his victims but in creating his own macabre masterpiece from their graves -- focused on the survivors and reveling in their grief. And now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake...
The Honeymoon Killer has decided they are the perfect next target. Take one out and delight as the other crumbles. Time is running out as a deadly game between predator and prey begins.
Critique: Original, deftly crafted, and especially recommended thriller of a read for those with an interest in police procedural murder mysteries of intense suspense, "The Grave Artist" by co-authors Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado features memorable characters and a wealth of unexpected, gut-wrenching, cliff-hanging, unexpected plot twists and turns, A simply fascinating read from start to finish, "The Grave Artist" is highly recommended, especially for community library Contemporary Mystery/Suspense collections. It should be noted that this hardcover edition of "The Grave Artist" from Thomas & Mercer is also readily available for personal reading lists in paperback (9781662518737, $16.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $4.99).
Editorial Note #1: Jeffery Deaver (www.jefferydeaver.com) is the author of numerous series, including Lincoln Rhyme, Colter Shaw, and Kathryn Dance, as well as the Sanchez & Heron series with Isabella Maldonado. Deaver's work includes fifty novels, more than one hundred short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. He was recently named a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, whose ranks include Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard, and Mickey Spillane.
Editorial Note #2: Isabella Maldonado (www.isabellamaldonado.com) is also the author of the Nina Guerrera, Daniela Vega, and Veranda Cruz series, as well as the Sanchez & Heron series with Jeffery Deaver. Her books are published in twenty-four languages. Maldonado wore a gun and badge in real life before turning to crime writing. A graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico and the first Latina to attain the rank of captain in her police department, she retired as the Commander of Special Investigations and Forensics. During her more than two decades on the force, her assignments included hostage negotiator, department spokesperson, and precinct commander. She uses her law enforcement background to bring a realistic edge to her writing.
The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva
Bharat
1947 Publications
9798887573335, $9.99, PB, 244pp
https://www.amazon.com/Hindu-Hurt-Story-Hindutva/dp/B0FBK7ZKDY
Synopsis: The ascent of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in Indian politics and its successive victories in 3 general elections (2014, 2019 and 2024) has brought into spotlight its ideology of Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism.
However, the impression of Hindutva that has gained currency in the West and to some extent in India as well is a distorted one; a canard spread by its adversaries who have deliberately misrepresented its concepts and exaggerated minor criminal aberrations of society to project them as examples of religious polarization.
Additionally, fringe elements have been projected as the prototype to demonize the movement as a supremacist violent hate rant -- a false patois that calls out for correction. With the publication of "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva", Bharat attempts to do so in a narrative that is spread out over 22 chapters and divided into 3 parts (over 150 references).
The second millennium was a devastating period for the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent. Indian history from the 7th century onwards till the twentieth century has been one long, tragic story of repeated foreign invasions, inhumane butchery of millions of innocent Hindus, senseless destruction of thousands of Hindu temples, and economic devastation that reduced one of the richest regions in the world to unimaginable penury.
Islamic invaders who reached India's borders in the seventh century A.D. gave a new meaning and a new dimension to the words destruction, loot, repression, and human carnage. In the first volume of The Story of Civilization, Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durrant the renowned American historian concludes: "The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."
The Muslim conquest of India was not an invasion in normal terms; it was a near apocalypse of unprecedented proportions that was intended to erase a civilization from earth by decimating its people, razing their temples and coercing a people into forsaking their beliefs. If ever there was a systematic attempt to annihilate a culture, a blue print for total destruction, this was it.
"The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" traces the story of that Hindu hurt and the crisis of identity that it generated among the Hindus. It provoked the Hindus to ask themselves: Who are we? What are our values? How do we protect ourselves and our values? This jolt gave rise to the concept of Hindvi Swarajya, Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism.
The first part of this history documents with historical references the constellation of wounds: mass killings, destruction of temples, forced conversions, jizya tax and slavery - all of which were carried out in a systematic fashion and which constitute what the author, Bharat, call the 'Hindu Hurt.'
It was against this background that the first stirrings of a collective identity took place. Initially this quest took the form of a military resistance represented by the Marathas, the Sikhs and the Rajputs. Later, in the early twentieth century, the Hindu ethos was given a concrete ideological framework by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and then built upon by latter proponents namely Deendayal Upadhya and RS Golwalkar.
The second part of "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" deals with the intellectual arguments that form the core of Hindutva.
The Hindu hurt has not only been exceptional in the scope of its diabolicity but in the extent of its suppression. A warped agenda that gripped the country post-independence (from British Rule) ensured that the story of the Hindu hurt was kept under wraps. Historical information was distorted, dubious interpretations were invoked to justify the crimes and outright lies were pedaled to perpetuate the ignorance among present day Hindus.
This denialism persists even today in prominent mainstream Indian newspapers and in the writings of the historian Ramachandra Guha (author of India After Gandhi), the novelist Pankaj Mishra and the Congress politician and ex UN official Shashi Tharoor.
The third part of "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" counters contemporary critics.
Critique: Hindutva (lit. 'Hindu-ness') is a political ideology steeped in the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism; it promotes Hindu hegemony and political domination within India, which is about 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim, and 6% belonging to other faiths as of 2025. Hindutva is a type of extremely conservative ethno-nationalism first formulated in 1922, but the bloody history that sparked Hindutva spans centuries. "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" is an exceptional, seminal and groundbreaking study, impressively informative, detailed, and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. An extraordinary introduction to the political history of India down to the present day, "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and college/university library Political/Cultural/Social History of India collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, historians, political activists, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this trade paperback edition of "The Hindu Hurt: The Story Of Hindutva" from 1947 Publications is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $2.99, Amazon).
Editorial Note: Bharat is one of the official names of India, derived from an ancient Sanskrit term which refers to the land associated with the Bharata tribe mentioned in Hindu scriptures. It is used alongside "India" and has historical significance, reflecting the country's cultural heritage.
Clint Travis
Reviewer
Debra Gaynor's Bookshelf
Sophie Was Here
Kathryn Croft
https://www.kathryncroft.com
Bookouture
https://bookouture.com
9781836186199, $11.99 PaperBack
https://www.amazon.com/Sophie-Was-Here-absolutely-psychological/dp/1836186193
Forest Farm was a beautiful farmhouse. Charlie and I had been together about a year when his parents gifted us the home. It made me feel like I was part of the family. However, the people in the village didn't accept us. When I went shopping, I heard the citizens whispering about Charlie and me. At the local pub everyone goes silent when we walk in. Eventually I learned about the girl that disappeared. Sophie was Charlie's girlfriend; she was seventeen years old. Charlie became upset when I asked him about her. Thinks didn't seem right. I found it in the basement; the words Sophie was here were scratched into the wall. I couldn't leave it alone; I had to find out what happened. I was surrounded by members of his family if I continued trying to find out what happened to Sophie I could be in danger.
This tale is told from several points of view and from two timelines. There are plenty of twists and turns to keep readers turning pages/listening. The main characters are Emmie and Charlie; Emmie suspects Charlie is tied to Sophie's disappearance. There are times when we look at something through rose colored glasses; but we can be deceived.
This tale has great potential however; the plot moved at a sss... lll... ooo... www pace. This book falls under the psychological thriller genre. I found it difficult to stay involved in this tale for the first 60% because of the pace. The ending wrapped up the plot very well.
50 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: Updated Edition
David Toht
Creative Homeowner
9781580116107, $21.99 PaperBack
https://www.amazon.com/Projects-Building-Backyard-Homestead-Updated/dp/1580116108
This is an updated version of 50 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead. There are several new projects. There are plans for chicken coops, sheds, and gardening among many others. The purpose of this book is to assist in being self-sufficient. The projects are hands on. The visuals are enhanced, and the instructions are step by step. Each project has a supply list, tools required and estimated cost.
This book may be too basic for some readers but for those just beginning or intermediate it is perfect. There are several projects I would like to work on. This is THE book for backyard enthusiasts and/or a person wanting to be self-sufficient.
Cold Case PERIL (Dakota K-9 Unit)
Maggie K. Black
Love Inspired Suspense
c/o Harlequin
https://www.harlequin.com
9781335980670, $7.99 PaperBack, $8.99 large print, $15.99 HardBack, $11.99 AudioBook, $4.99 EBook
https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Peril-Dakota-Unit-ebook/dp/B0DFQFBR9R
Micah Landon is a dog trainer; he is also a man putting his life back together. He is investigating his stepmother's murder which is a cold case.
Officer Lucy Lopez is a single mother, and a K-9 officer. Currently she is working on a weapons smuggling case involving Micah's half-brother. Her experiences with men in the past have been disappointing.
Piper is a K-9 officer.
Someone wants Micah dead. Lucy and Micah meet when she witnesses someone trying to run him off the road. They have an instant attraction, but both are very cautious. A second attempt on his life proves someone wants him dead. The Dakota K-9 Unit always work together; in this case Lucy takes the lead in this case.
This book is written with Christian values. None of the characters are perfect but neither are the readers. This book provides a demonstration of Grace. Both have suffered loss and pain, but both choose to trust God.
This is the fourth book in the Dakota K-9 Unit series. I am a dog lover, and this book appealed to me because of the delightful dogs as well as the well written plot. The plot begins with action and continues throughout the book. This is a great read; I will be looking for more books by author Maggie K. Black.
The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook: Cookies and Treats from America's Golden Era
Becky Libourel Diamond
Globe Pequot Press
https://www.globepequot.com
9781493088423, $34.95 HardBack
https://www.amazon.com/Gilded-Age-Christmas-Cookbook-Americas/dp/1493088424
When I think of Christmas past, I imagine mantels covered in pine and cedar with matching wreaths hung on the doors, candles in the windows, a tree with red bows and a festive atmosphere. I love to cook and of course I imagine cookies and candy treats to tempt the taste buds and hot apple cider with spices. I love Christmas, I love every aspect of the holiday except undecorating afterwards.
The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook Cookies and Treats from America's Golden Age is the perfect book for Christmas. It makes a great present for your family, friends and yourself. This book has yummy recipes for cake, pie and cookies. The pictures make the recipes come to life. There is information about the tradition of Christmas and Hanukkah during the Gilded Age.
Creating a Modern Homestead: Traditional Skills for Real, Everyday Life
Victoria Pruett
Lyons Press
c/o Globe Pequot Press
https://www.globepequot.com
9781493090495, $27.95 PaperBack
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Modern-Homestead-Traditional-Homesteaders/dp/1493090496
Modern life causes stress, anxiety and illness. We have decided it is time to look for a simpler way of life. You do not have to live in a rural area to use traditional skills. We embraced this culture over 40 years ago, however there is always room to learn more. There are many traditional skills discussed in this book including cooking from scratch, how to keep your pantry stocked, how to raise chickens, how to raise your own vegetables and how to preserve your vegetables.
Author Victoria Pruett demonstrates how to integrate traditional skills into your life. That's right you can deal with employment, family, and social lives. With preparation and training you will begin to think of ways and methods that will help you become self-reliant and become comfortable putting them in practice.
This book has numerous recipes for cooking, preserving food by the water bath canning, pressure canning, freezing, dehydrating and freezing drying. The readers will learn about raising chickens in the back yard. In gardening the reader will discover information about raising a garden, growing zones, growing seasons, companion planting and pest control without harsh chemicals.
It is time to slow our lives down, live a simpler but healthier lifestyle. Not only will we be healthier but it also is a cheaper way to live. I highly recommend this book.
A Hermeneutic of Imagination: Unlocking Scripture's Full Potential
Knut M. Heim, author
Jeffrey R. Oetter, contributor
Baker Academic
https://bakeracademic.com
9781540969101, $23.49 PaperBack, $59.99 HardBack, $28.99 EBook
https://www.amazon.com/Hermeneutic-Imagination-Unlocking-Scriptures-Potential/dp/154096910X
The Bible has a message for everyone there are those than take it at face value and there are those who believe there are deeper messages that can be found when doing a through study. In this book we look at scripture through imagination. I believe we need to look at scriptures through the places, time and culture. But I also agree that there are deep messages that come to light when we dig deeper using our imagination.
Authors Knut M. Heim and Jeffray R. Oetter are experts in biblical poetry. "The meaning of HERMENEUTIC is the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible). It is the study of interpretation". The authors discuss the many techniques used in scripture among them are figurative language, emotions, and humor. By using our imagination, we can form biblical ideas that draw us toward the messages that show us what the scripture was intended to tell us.
I enjoy bible study. I like digging deep and getting the intended message from the scripture. This book is invaluable to bible study.
Danger In The Wilderness
Darlene L. Turner
https://darlenelturner.com
Love Inspired Suspense
c/o Harlequin
https://www.harlequin.com
9781335957238, $7.99 PaperBack, $8.99 HardBack, $15.99 AudioBook
https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Wilderness-National-Park-Protectors-ebook/dp/B0D7Z39JN7
The National Parks is the setting for this tale of murder. The murders are escalating, and they have no idea who the serial killer is. Park Warden Dekker and his father are on a camping trip. Dekker is gathering firewood when he hears shots; his father is missing. Investigative Analyst Blair is investigating the killings. She and Dekker form a bond; they are determined to discover the identity of the killer.
This is a fast paced easy to read tale. This is one of those tales that will keep you guessing. I enjoyed this tale!
The Sea Witch: Salt & Sorcery #1
Eva Leigh
https://evaleighauthor.com
Canary Street Press
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9781335143761, $18.99 PaperBack / $12.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Witch-Salt-Sorcery/dp/1335143769
Our main character is Alys Tanner; she was condemned to die for being a witch. She managed to escape Puritanical New England, using her magical powers; she fled to the high seas where she stole The Sea Witch. She became captain of the ship with an all-female crew. They ruled the high seas using their sorcery. The British navy is determined to capture and defeat them. The British Navy wants to control the Caribbean and intends to destroy pirates, witches and anything that won't bow to them.
After a year on the waters, the Sea Witch's crew captures the naval navigator, Ben Priestley. Ben and Alys form a tentative bond, together they can take down the Navy. Together they face dangerous islands, lying pirates, and the monsters that fill the seas; they form an unexpected relationship.
This is a pirate romance novel at its best. In this tale Alys is more experienced than Ben and guides their relationship. This tale has desire, witchcraft, and female liberation. The females in this tale are strong, independent and determined to make their mark on the world and mankind.
The Rancher's Prayer
Donna Gartshore
Love Inspired
c/o Harlequin
https://www.harlequin.com
9781335621108, $7.99 PaperBack / $4.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Ranchers-Prayer-Uplifting-Inspirational-Romance/dp/1335621105
Luke Duffy knew the family ranch was going under; he wasn't sure how to save it. His deceased father made some bad decisions and now the family ranch and their horse therapy business were in big trouble. Arabella Lark was a visitor on the ranch; she was a public relations expert, and she has a plan, but Luke hesitates to depend on her; he has learned not to trust easily. Arabella is a single mom, her daughter struggles with fear and anxiety. Luke and Arabella are drawn to each other however a relationship means facing their fears.
I love this tale. It is clean, easy to read and has a wonderful plot. There is a Christian theme running throughout this tale. I like the characters, most of all I love the plot.
Friends to Lovers
Sally Blakely
Canary Street Press
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9781335014245, $18.99 PaperBack
https://www.amazon.com/Friends-Lovers-Sally-Blakely/dp/1335014241
Joni and Ren have been friends all their lives. As children you rarely saw one without the other. As an adult Joni followed her job and moved away but they stayed a close part of each other's lives by vowing to be each other's plus-ones during the wedding season. Then something happened that put their friendship in jeopardy.
Joni's sister is getting married. She is staying with her family at their summer home. Determined to make her sister's day perfect, Joni is willing to fake her friendship with Ren. Life without Ren in her life is less satisfying. It dawns on her she is in love with Ren but can she get past the pain from the past.
Neither Joni nor Ren want to face what happened. But the time finally comes when they must re-evaluate their relationship and decide whether it is worth fighting for.
I enjoyed this tale. It is a friend to lovers/second chance romance. The tension between Joni and Ren is thick. It is so obvious that they belong together and are stronger together. I found myself rooting for their relationship. This is an easy read and an excellent one.
Alaskan Police Protector
Megan Short
Love Inspired Suspense
c/o Harlequin
https://www.harlequin.com
9781335980717, $7.99 PaperBack, $11.99 AudioBook, $4.00 EBook
https://www.amazon.com/Alaskan-Police-Protector-Megan-Short/dp/1335980717
The setting is Cordova, Alaska.
The minivan slid into the icy water of the lake. Officer Samuel Miller and his K-9 assistant hear the crash; they found the minivan on the edge of the icy lake. Samuel managed to pull the child and woman from the minivan in the nick of time. Rachel Harding knows it wasn't an accident; her sister and brother-in-law died similarly. The "accidents" were accelerating. Samuel offers Rachel and her orphaned niece his protection and they need it because the more they probe the more danger there is.
Rachel moved to Alaska to care for niece, Katie. The child's parents passed away in a car accident, 6 months ago in a car accident.
The description of Cordova, Alaska is breathtaking. As I listened to this book, I could see the remote, jagged, and perilous landscape. I could feel the fear, the uncertainty and danger. Samuel and Bruce were the only hope Rachel, and her niece had.
The characters in this book are pure perfection. Bruce is a special dog. Rachel and Samuel played well together. Rachel's niece, 6 year old Katie, was such a sweet girl. Both Rachel and Samuel are ready to fight for Katie. There is a feeling of love and gratitude from the main characters and the secondary characters add depth to the story.
There is a subtle Christian theme in this tale. The focus is on trusting God, allowing Him total control of your life. Author Megan Short is a talented writer. There were plenty of twists and turns throughout this tale. There were mysteries, confusion, and sentiment to keep me turning pages.
For the Love of Dog: How Dogs Think and the Unbreakable Bond That Connects Us
Maggie Marton
Regalo Press
https://regalopress.com
c/o Post Hill Press
https://posthillpress.com
9798888456910, $18.99 Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Dog-Think-Unbreakable-Connects/dp/B0F281B8LP
Most people can be divided into one of three groups: a cat person, a dog person, or neither. I happen to be a dog person. Over the years I have had numerous dogs from Skippy a Cocker Spaniel, Rusty a small terrier, Katie a Yorkie, Buddy a German Shepherd, Elvis a Yorkie, Whitley a Malti-Poo, to Emmie a Morkie and I loved them all. Dogs and humans have a special relationship.
Author Maggie Marton offers a beautiful tribute to Man's Best Friend.
Debra Gaynor, Reviewer
www.hancockclarion.com
Emily Patton's Bookshelf
The Cabin at the End of the World
Paul Tremblay
William Morrow
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780062679109, $18.99 pbk / $8.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Cabin-End-World-Movie-Tie/dp/0063251809
The Cabin at the End of the World is another apocalyptic story. The setting is a vacation cabin in the middle of nowhere. Eric and Andrew have come here with their young daughter, Wen, for vacation. It's a quiet, secluded spot nestled beside a lake with no nearby neighbors.
Wen plays in the yard while Eric and Andrew get settled in the cabin. A man comes and begins to play with Wen. He says his name is Leonard. Wen becomes uncomfortable with him and goes into the cabin. Now three other people join Leonard. They all carry odd, makeshift weapons - sledgehammers, rakes, and blades - all attached to the ends of long wooden handles. One is "...a flower of rusty hand shovel and/or trowel blades, nailed and screwed to the end..." of a long handle.
Eric and Andrew lock up the cabin to keep these strange people out, but the peculiar people break in anyway. Eric and Andrew are tied up, while the seven-year-old Wen is left free. The rest of the book revolves around the conflict between Eric, Andrew, Wen, and their four strange captors.
The book is action-packed. The first sixty pages are about the couple and daughter trying to keep invaders out of the cabin. Slowly, the attackers reveal their purpose, and the terror grows. Very beautifully written with a rapid pace. The point of view shifts between Eric, Andrew, and Wen as they are held captive by the invaders. This book starts with a bang and maintains active tension, never letting up. The predicament of the main characters is intriguing, and I kept reading to discover what the next jaw-dropping revelation would be.
Still, the story feels unbelievable and therefore lacks the scare factor. I don't think it could happen, so I'm not afraid. The motivations of the villains are as truly baffling as those of real-life fanatics who believe the world is going to end. Ultimately, the book, the world, and life itself seem meaningless.
The Cabin at the End of the World has a world of suspense going for it. The reader keeps asking 'why is this happening' but the answer, when it comes, isn't very satisfying. On the horror scale, where one is not scary at all and five is sleep-with-the-lights-on scary, this book rates a three.
Emily A. Patton
Reviewer
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
Spare These Stones: A Journey Through Southern Climbing Culture
Andrew Kornylak
Mountaineers Books
www.mountaineersbooks.org
9781680518221, $34.95, HC, 208pp
https://www.amazon.com/Spare-These-Stones-Southern-Climbing/dp/1680518224
Synopsis: "Spare These Stones: A Journey Through Southern Climbing Culture" is a magnificently visual and narrative exploration of the evolution of climbing in the Southern United States during the transformative decades of the 1990s and 2000s.
From its clandestine roots, when climbing was an underground pursuit shrouded in secrecy with areas passed around through word of mouth, to its rise in accessibility through grassroots efforts and land conservation, with the publication of "Spare These Stones", photographer and filmmaker Andrew Kornylak delves into the intricate threads of geography and culture.
This heart-shaped region of Southern climbing, stretching from Nashville to Charlotte and Atlanta to Lexington, is known for limestone and sandstone cliffs, hard bouldering, and challenging roof cracks. Highlighting efforts of the community to protect climbing areas, Kornylak shares stories about Jerry Roberts, Joey Henson, Greg Kottkamp, Lisa Rands, Adam Henry, James Litz, and many more at off-the-beaten path spots and iconic destinations like the Tennessee Wall near Chattanooga and Horse Pens 40 Ranch in Alabama.
"Spare These Stones" celebrates the resilient spirit of Southern climbers and their profound connection to the rugged, culturally-rich areas they call home.
Critique: This large format (8.5 x 9.75, 1.74 pounds) coffee-table style hardcover edition of Andrew Kornylak's "Spare These Stones: A Journey Through Southern Climbing Culture" from Mountaineers Books is a simply fascinating and informative compendium of captioned full color photographs and authentic commentaries on and about the subject of rock climbing in the southern states. A wonder and joy to simply browse through and is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Rock & Mountain Climbing collections and studies lists.
Editorial Note: Andrew Kornylak (https://www.andrewkornylak.com) is a photographer and filmmaker who grew up in Southern Ohio. After earning a degree in mathematics, Kornylak traveled and climbed around the US and abroad, taking jobs as a software developer, high-rise window-washer, and climbing instructor. Kornylak's photography and writing have been published by diverse outlets, including Discover, National Geographic, Rock & Ice, The North Face, ESPN, PBS, Red Bull, and Garden & Gun. As a director and cinematographer, Kornylak has had a hand in commercials, music videos, and award-winning documentaries, including A Fine Line, Inner Mounting Flame, and The Mapmaker. Kornylak lives in North Carolina.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Henry David Thoreau and the Nick of Time
Kathryn C. Dolan, John J. Kucich, and Henrik Otterberg, editors
Mercer University Press
www.mupress.org
9780881460735, $40.00, HC, 304pp
https://www.amazon.com/Henry-David-Thoreau-Nick-Time/dp/0881460737
Synopsis: Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) felt he was born in the nick of time, at the cusp of the modern global capitalist era, what he called in his iconic book, 'Walden' this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century."
His effort to live between two eternities, the past and the future, involved both a sharp focus on the injustices of his own time and attention to the longer rhythms and cycles of time that resist the temporalities of "progress" and "efficiency."
Thoreau wove ancient human and non-human understandings of time into the Concord of his present while resisting the historical pressures of his own world. To see the world more clearly, Thoreau argued, we need to step outside of our ordinary perception of time and seize the moment.
The collection of essays comprising "Henry David Thoreau and the Nick of Time: Temporality and Agency in Thoreau's Era and Ours" brings together a range of distinguished and exciting new Thoreau scholars from across the globe who address some of the implications of Thoreau's manifold explorations of the nature of time and their meaning for his world and ours.
Critique: Collaboratively compiled and expertly co-edited by the team of Kathryn C Dolan, John J Kucich, and Henrik Otterberg, this hardcover edition of "Henry David Thoreau and the Nick of Time: Temporality and Agency in Thoreau's Era and Ours" from the Mercer University Press is a seminal, invaluable, and unreservedly contribution to personal, community, and college/university library Henry David Thoreau collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: Kathryn C. Dolan is professor of English at Missouri University of Science and Technology, publishing articles on Thoreau in "Henry David Thoreau in Context" and Rediscovering the Maine Woods". She serves on the board of directors of the Thoreau Society.
Editorial Note #2: John J. Kucich is a professor of English at Bridgewater State University and author of "Unsettling Thoreau: Native Americans, Settler Colonialism and the Power of Place". He serves as president of the Thoreau Society.
Editorial Note #3: Henrik Otterberg is a Swedish economist at Kagaku Analys AB. He wrote his PhD on Thoreau's aesthetics. Since 2017, he has served as bibliographer and review editor for the Thoreau Society Bulletin. He has also organized international Thoreau conferences in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Reykholt, Iceland.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Dorm to Doorstep
Hilary Afshary
https://www.hilaryafshary.com
Foreva Press
9798992686104, $22.95 PB / $9.99 Kindle, 242pp
https://www.amazon.com/Dorm-Doorstep-Tidbits-Tales-Every/dp/B0F33VQBHK
Synopsis: With the publication of "Dorm to Doorstep -Tips, Tidbits and Tales Every Young Woman Will Want to Read", author Hilary Afshary provides a fun, engaging, coming of age/adulting guide written specifically for the young woman heading out on her own!
"Dorm to Doorstep" is deftly organized in layers, just like your favorite ice cream sundae!
Glow Up, Girl: Personal Growth & Insights
Glam Bam, Thank You Ma'am (the sauce): Fashion, Beauty & Wellness
Laced with Grace (the whipped cream): Relationships & Demeanor
Gather Round with Goodness (the cherry on top): Tips & Tidbits for Daily Living
Hilary vividly presents life lessons in full, living color. Every page is bright, just like your future, with colored sprinkles of learning scattered throughout. Oh, and watch for RED moments -- cold, hard truths that pop up when you need a reality check.
"Dorm to Doorstep" can be read page to page or casually open for the AHA of the day; picked up again and put down at leisure.
Every word comes from the Hilary's place of personal experience and truth drawn from her own life and raising a daughter.
Critique: Original, insightful, thought-provoking, inspiring, exceptional, memorable, "Dorm to Doorstep - Tips, Tidbits and Tales Every Young Woman Will Want to Read" by Hilary Afshary is ideal reading for adolescent young women from ages 16-18 and invaluable reading for those graduating college or university and preparing for a career, as well as young women of any age preparing for marriage and a family of their own. This trade paperback edition of "Dorm to Doorstep" from Foreva Press is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, highschool, community, and college/university Self-Help/Self-Improvement collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Dorm to Doorstep" is also available in a Kindle edition ($9.99).
Editorial Note: Hilary Afshary (https://grownandflown.com/author/hilaryafshary) holds a B.A. from Hollins University and an M.B.A. from Arizona State University. Her varied list of unique accomplishments includes serving as the presidential greeter to President George W. Bush, volunteering in a myriad of positions including President all the way down to painter for more than 15 non-profit organizations in Arizona and Colorado, cooking a mean Khoresh Gheymeh and Chicken Tikka Masala, tipping her toe into the lifestyle blogger/influencer world with loveglittergirl.com, assisting in her daughter's acting career as chief momager, and self-proclaimed Auntie to her daughter's friends.
Wild Like a Woman
Thalia Geiger
https://thaliageiger.com
Finishing Line Press
https://www.finishinglinepress.com
9798888389713, $17.99, PB, 38pp
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/wild-like-a-woman-by-thalia-geiger
Synopsis: Self-Care
Is it a softening or a sharpening
when we file our everything
with pumice stones?
We are rage and rhythm
all in the same breath
and they fear both.
"Wild Like a Woman" by poetess Thalia Geiger is an extensive meditation on femininity, born as a reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Cycling through emotional places both high and low, the verse comprising "Wild Like a Woman" moves from loss and lamentation to rage and defiance, then back again to the subsequent focus on the celebration of womanhood, girlhood, and every joy in between.
Of special note, the poem "Lavender & Damiana" won Black Fox Literary's 2025 Summer Portraits of Failure Prize.
Critique: With poetry and verse that is unrelentingly original, authentic, eloquent, memorable, and deftly crafted, "Wild Like a Woman" is an extraordinary read and an unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry collections.
Editorial Note: Thalia Geiger (https://thaliageiger.com) is a poet and fiction writer born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she lives and works as a publishing associate and poetry editor. Her poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Allegory Ridge, Santa Ana River Review, and her fiction has appeared in Coffin Bell, and Grim & Gilded.
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
Your To-Die-For Life
Karen Salmansohn
BenBella Books
www.benbellabooks.com
9781637747025, $19.95, PB, 256pp
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Die-Life-Maximize-Minimize/dp/1637747020
Synopsis: Feeling her own mortality, Karen Salmansohn (the author of How to Be Happy, Dammit and a leading behavioral change expert) went on her own "I'm-going-to-die" journey. And it made her life better. Way better. So she began sharing these tools with her clients, and their lives also began to bloom in amazing ways.
Science backs up the perks of mortality awareness. Studies show that when you embrace the fact that your time is limited, you stop wasting energy on nonsense -- and start making choices that align with your deepest values.
With the publication of "Your To-Die-For Life: How to Maximize Joy and Minimize Regret . . . Before Your Time Runs Out", Salmansohn shares a wide range of practical, research-based tools that will help you to dismantle your fears and step into the life you were meant to live.
"Your To-Die-For Life" is a DIY guide to:
Writing your own eulogy: Sounds a little dark, right? But it's actually a genius way to reverse-engineer the life you want.
Creating a "to-die" list: Think of this as a "what matters most" list. You'll learn how to better focus on what truly makes you come alive - and build simple micro-habits to bring more of that into your everyday life.
Do a life audit: Let go of the clutter that's draining your time, energy and attention.
"Your To-Die-For Life" is compendium of eye-opening studies, inspiring philosophical truths, and Salmansohn's signature cheeky humor. She will make you laugh, make you think, and make you want to stop wasting time on things that don't light you up.
Critique: Inspired and inspiring, thoughtful and thought-provoking, informative and insightful, "Your To-Die-For Life: How to Maximize Joy and Minimize Regret... Before Your Time Runs Out" by Karen Salmansohn is a fun, fascinating, occasional iconoclastic, and life-changing read from start to finish. Exceptionally well written, and thoroughly 'reader/user' friendly in organization and effective in presentation, While "Your To-Die-For Life" is unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and college/university library Self-Help/Self-Improvement collections, it should be noted that this paperback edition from BenBella Books is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note: Karen Salmansohn (https://www.notsalmon.com) is a behavioral change expert, and columnist for Oprah and Psychology Today, as well as the founder of the popular personal development site NotSalmon.com. She has been sparking transformations in individuals and companies for a few decades and is passionate about digging deep and finding fascinating insights, tools, and studies from all areas of life, including psychology, Eastern and Western philosophy, neuroscience, quantum physics, and more.
Pirkei Hallel
Rena Ariel & Tziporah Piltz, authors
Rivka Atara Tsinman, illustrator
Gefen Publishing House
c/o Storch
www.gefenpublishing.com
9789657864241, $45.00, HC, 266pp
https://www.amazon.com/Pirkei-Hallel-Journey-Mitzvah-Mothers/dp/9657864240
Synopsis: Pirkei Avot is a book also known as "Ethics of the Fathers" or "Chapters of the Fathers." It is a collection of ethical teachings and maxims from ancient Jewish sages.
"Pirkei Hallel - A Shared Journey for Bat Mitzva Girls and Their Mothers" is a unique book that captures Jewish women's wisdom across the ages.
Written by sisters Rena Ariel (Hallel's mother) and Tziporah Piltz (Hallel's aunt.) "Pirkei Hallel" offers a shared journey for mothers and daughters to learn together in preparation for Bat Mitzva when a young Jewish girl begins her journey to womanhood.
While Pirkei Hallel was written with Bat Mitzva girls in mind, anyone who'd like to gain a deeper understanding of Jewish tradition, the matriarchs, and other notable Jewish women from the Bible will enjoy this book.
It is designed so you and your daughter can study one chapter a month for a year. "Pirkei Hallel" is divided into twelve chapters Accepting Mitzvot (Jewish commandments) The Four Matriarchs Chesed (Kindness) My Roots Speech Truth Gratitude Beauty and Modesty Shabbat Prayer Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) The Beit HaMikdash (The Jewish Temple) Each chapter is composed of five parts Study pages Activity pages A short story For Mothers: Moments of Hallel One Last Thing - A space for you to write down your thoughts
"Pirkei Hallel" is beautiful book that was written in memory of Rena Ariel's daughter Hallel Yaffa who, at the age of sixteen, was murdered in her home in a horrifying attack by a 17 year old Palestinian terrorist.
Her mother describes her daughter as a "beautiful, happy child with a smile that lit up the room."
By studying the book Pirkei Hallel, you will get to know Hallel Yaffa and the different aspects of her personality while you and your daughter get to know one another better. "Pirkei Hallel" is a treasure for your family, friends, and loved ones. While it is written with mothers and daughters in mind, you may choose to study with a close female friend, goddaughter, niece, or granddaughter.
Critique: Original, unique, exceptional, thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, this large format (8.86 x 8.66 x 0.71 inches, 2.2 pounds) hardcover edition of "Pirkei Hallel - A Shared Journey for Bat Mitzva Girls and Their Mothers" from the Gefen Publishing House is informatively enhanced with the inclusion of a 33 page comic strip (Searching for You and Finding Myself), Glossary of Works & Authors, a pictorial panel (Recommended Hallel). Illustrated by Rivka Atara Tsinman, this magnificent edition of "Pirkei Hallel" is co-authored by Rena Ariel and Tzipora Piltz -- making it especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, family, synagogue, community, and college/university Judaic Studies collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Matthew McCarty's Bookshelf
The JFK Conspiracy
Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
Flatiron Books
c/o Macmillan
https://us.macmillan.com
9781250790576, $29.99 Hardcover, $15.99 Kindle, 290 pages
https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Conspiracy-Secret-Kennedy_and-Failed/dp/1250790573
The conspiracy theories that surround the presidency of John F. Kennedy are written about with as much passion and interest as any era in American history. The assassination of President Kennedy alone has spawned volumes that number in the thousands. However, prolific author Brad Meltzer and his writing partner Josh Mensch have written about a little known episode of the Kennedy era that is just as interesting as the tragic end of the administration that would come three years later. The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy - And Why It Failed (Flatiron Books, 290 pgs., US $29.99 CAN $39.99) is an expertly written account of the attempt by a disillusioned citizen to attack President Kennedy at his Florida compound in December of 1960. The plot reads like a suspense novel with reality thrown in for good measure.
The story centers around a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick who lives in the small town of Belmont, New Hampshire. Pavlick does not like President Kennedy and convinces himself that he must neutralize the President before he assumes office in January of 1961. Pavlick drives to Palm Beach, Florida with a car loaded with dynamite. His intention is to kill the President. However, Pavlick glimpses the President's family, sending him off to church and loses his nerve. He is arrested several days later and spends some time in prison as a result of his convoluted attempt to harm JFK. Pavlick is eventually released from prison after the assassination in Dallas and dies in obscurity.
Meltzer and Mensch weave this episode into a very readable narrative. As mentioned earlier, The JFK Conspiracy reads like a suspense novel. It is fast-paced and exciting. The reader turns the page hoping to find some link to Dallas. Meltzer and Mensch do a great job in allowing the chronology to play itself out effortlessly. The JFK Conspiracy is a great opportunity for historians, amateur and professional alike, to take a journey through the beginnings of cold war America and the events that have led to our modern world.
Matthew W. McCarty, EdD
Reviewer
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!
Richard Wolinsky, editor
Tachyon Publications
https://tachyonpublications.com
9781616964429, $17.95, PB, 264pp
https://www.amazon.com/Space-Ships-Guns-Martian-Octopods/dp/1616964421
Synopsis: Today, depictions of aliens, rocket ships, and awe-inspiring, futuristic space operas are everywhere. Why is there so much science fiction, and where did it come from anyway? Radio producer and author Richard Wolinsky has found answers in the Golden Age of science fiction, between 1920 and 1960 and shares them in the pages of "Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends".
Wolinsky and his fellow writers and co-hosts Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, interviewed a veritable who's who of famous (and infamous) science-fiction publishers, pulp magazines, editors, cover artists, and fans. The interviews themselves, which aired on the public radio, Probabilities, span over twenty years, from just before the release of Star Wars through the dawn of Y2K.
Probabilities was the home of a vivid cross-section of the early science fiction world, with radio guests offering a wide range of tales, opinions, theory, and gossip. It speaks to how, in the early days, they were free to define science fiction for themselves and push the genre to explore new ideas and new tropes in creative (and sometimes questionable) ways.
"Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!" is ultimately a love letter to fandom and aspiring science fiction authors. Science fiction wouldn't have survived as a genre if there weren't devoted fanatics who wrote fanzines, organized conventions, and built relationships for fandom to flourish and science fiction writers to get published!
Critique: Fascinating, informative, 'behind the scenes' insightful, and a fun read from start to finish, "Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends" A compendium of succinct interviews for radio with a wealth of writers ranging from Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Fletcher Pratt, to A.E. Van Voght, Leigh Brackett, and Isaac Asimov -- and so many, many more, "Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends" is especially and unreservedly recommended as a prized and original pick for personal, community, and college/university library Science Fiction Literary Criticism & History collections. It should be noted for anyone aspiring to become a successful science fiction writer that this trade paperback edition from Tachyon Publications is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $11.99).
Editorial Note: Richard Wolinsky (http://www.richardwolinsky.com) co-hosted and produced Probabilities, a half-hour public radio program devoted to science fiction, mystery and mainstream fiction, from 1977 to 1995 on KPFA-FM. He took the program solo in 2002, renamed it Bookwaves, and it is still running. Along the way, he has spoken with most of the English-speaking world's leading authors, including Peter Carey, Joseph Heller, William Kennedy, Margaret Atwood, Anne Rice, Gore Vidal, James Ellroy, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie, E.L. Doctorow, and many others. Wolinsky's interviews have been published in numerous venues, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Heavy Metal, Mystery Scene Magazine, and in such books as Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, The Louis L'Amour Companion, and Macabre II: Stephen King & Clive Barker.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Nikolas Mavreas' Bookshelf
If I Am Right, and I Know I Am
Hanne Strager
Columbia University Press
https://cup.columbia.edu
9780231218641, $30.00 HC, $29.99 E-book, 320 pp.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/if-i-am-right-and-i-know-i-am/9780231562386
https://www.amazon.com/If-Right-Know-Discovered-Innermost/dp/0231218648
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/if-i-am-right-and-i-know-i-am-hanne-strager/1147167687
With the publication of "If I Am Right, and I Know I Am: Inge Lehmann, the Woman Who Discovered Earth's Innermost Secret", the pioneering Danish seismologist, Inge Lehmann, now has her first book-length biography. It is written by fellow Danish scientist Hanne Strager, and was previously published in Denmark in 2022. It is presumably translated by the author herself, as no additional translator is given. In addition to previously available material, Strager has taken advantage of Lehmann's unpublished letters and diaries.
Lehmann's childhood was lonely, as her father, Alfred, was absorbed in his work on experimental psychology, while her mother suffered from depression or anxiety. With a talent for mathematics, Lehmann found herself at the Newnham College of Cambridge University in 1910 at age 22, the place where Virginia Woolf would deliver her famous "Room of One's One" lecture 18 years later. Unable to attempt the University's highest exam due to her sex, she returned to Denmark where she began working for an insurance company. She left that company some time later because, again, there was a ceiling for how far a woman was allowed to climb. Lehmann ended up graduating as a mathematician from the University of Copenhagen and went into seismology because she was the only person in the University who could make sense of its newly acquired seismographs. She subsequently became Denmark's only seismologist.
Strager intersperses some discussion about early geoscience throughout the book, always in an accessible manner and without oversimplifying. It was known that the earth had a liquid core, but Lehmann found, through interpreting seismograph readings, that there was another, solid core inside that one. The discovery made her the "famous Inge Lehmann," as she was later called during her visit to America. She published her last research paper at the age of ninety-nine, six years before her death.
While we get glimpses of a complex and fierce woman, glimpses are all they remain. Perhaps there is not enough available material about her personal and inner lives, but it should be enough for a good writer to deliver a great book about so great a subject. As it is, the volume offers only a cursory look at such a long and interesting life.
It is an intriguing psychological sketch of an evidently seismic personality. It makes us crave for the complete portrait.
Editorial Note: Hanne Strager (https://hannestrager.com) is a biologist and acclaimed science writer. Her books include The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas (2023), which received a National Outdoor Book Award. She is the director of exhibitions of The Whale in Norway and was formerly the director of exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
Nikolas Mavreas
Reviewer
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
The Bowery
David Mulkins, author
Arcadia Publishing
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com
9781467162067, $24.49 paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Bowery-Images-America-David-Mulkins/dp/146716206X
On The Bowery For Independence Day
Every Fourth of July, I try to review a book that enhances the meaning of the day. The book for this year is "The Bowery" (2025), a short photographic history of the famed oldest street in New York City. The Bowery is a street of about one mile in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Much of the Bowery was designated a National Historic District in 2013, and a map of the area is included early in the book. Over its long history, the Bowery has shown the diversity and potential of American life as it has been home to some of the wealthiest of Americans but more often to the poorest and the lost. It has been home to many immigrants, including Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese, Italians and to African Americans. It is a community that continues to undergo change and is a street valuable to visit and to get to know this Independence Day.
The author, David Mulkins, is a retired history and cinema studies teacher and the president of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, a community organization dedicated to preserving the historic character of the Bowery. Architectural historian Kerri Calhane, Phd, author of the National Historic Preservation nomination for the Bowery, wrote a brief Foreword. Calhane aptly describes the book as a "prodigious feat of research." He points out that it "demonstrates a dedication to this place, and to the lives, histories, legends, and folklore that lend the Bowery its grit, its power, and its peculiar charm."
The book is replete with fascinating images of the people and places of the Bowery over time. Mulkins provides commentary on the images together with additional historical discussion. He gives a brief over view of the changing history of the Bowery from the time of the Lenape Indians, through the Dutch, through the early estates of the landed gentry early in the 19th Century to the present. The Bowery was once a home to the working class and a lively entertainment center. As Mulkins writes: "the profusion of saloons, tattoo parlors, gambling dens, whorehouses, and low-rent lodging houses, combined with the presence of gangs, roughnecks, the destitute, and criminal element, also brought notoriety."
The Bowery became America's skid row early in the 20th Century through about the 1970s. The area has since undergone gentrification and renewal but has lost some of its character. Mulkins says: "This one-time stomping ground of the poor, the working class, and immigrants possesses an international multi-cultural character that is uniquely American, but could only have happened here on the Bowery."
Of the book's five chapters, the most familiar and the post poignant is chapter 3, titled "The Street of Forgotten Men". In images and text, this chapter shows the Bowery as America's most famous skid row, frequented by the destitute, with its flophouses and bars under the shadow of the Elevated Railroad. The chapter also describes the Rescue Missions and other community activities designed to provide help. I walked in the Bowery briefly in the mid-1960s and have seen several documentary films on the skid row years . The images, Mulkins's text, and the sources he discusses bring insight to this central time in the Bowery's history. It is part of the American story and deserves commemoration on Independence Day.
The remaining four chapters range more widely over the Bowery's history. Mulkins shows the range of the people that have lived or worked in the Bowery and of the historical architecture, some of which is no more. He discusses the Bowery as a center of the working class, with its entertainments in theater and music to a wide range of people together with, as he discussed in the Introduction, its more unsavory elements. Grit abounds throughout the Bowery's story, and resilience does as well. The book's final two chapters deal with the Bowery's history following the demise of skid row. It has became a haven for writers and artists, including the beats, experimental jazz, punk rock, and much more. Billie Holiday performed in a Bowery club during her final years. The Bowery has also continued with social and cultural activism and with thought. Mulkins discusses historic Cooper Union, the Bowery's intellectual anchor, and the first free university in the United States open to all. He discusses many artists and intellectuals who for years made their home in the Bowery, including, for example, feminist writer Kate Millet (1934-2017) who lived in the Bowery for some sixty years and was active in community affairs.
This book reminded me of the promise of American urban life and of American life. We need to take and understand and love all of it even while working for change. I enjoyed seeing the Bowery over time for my Independence Day book review. The book is part of the Images of America Series of local American histories of Arcadia Publishing. Arcadia kindly sent me a review copy.
Shipwreck on the Potomac: Disaster in Pursuit of Lincoln's Killer
Karen E. Stone, author
The History Press
c/o Arcadia Publishing
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com
9781467158671, $24.99, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Shipwreck-Potomac-Disaster-Pursuit-Lincolns/dp/1467158674
A Shipwreck On The Potomac
The study of the Civil War often involves learning about grand, sweeping, history-changing events. But just as often are encounters with many smaller, less well-known - but still important - happenings associated with those of larger scope. Karen E. Stone's book, Shipwreck on the Potomac: Disaster in Pursuit of Lincoln's Killer, is a book about one such smaller scale event. It is apparently the first book-length study of an April 25, 1865, disaster that occurred following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In Shipwreck on the Potomac, Stone's first book, she tells this tragic story well and places it within its proper historical context.
Stone serves as the museum division manager for St. Mary's County, Maryland. St. Clement's Island - at the time of the shipwreck known as Blackistone Island - is the location of one of the St. Mary's County's museums and is near where the events of Stone's study took place. The museum presents an annual event commemorating the April 25, 1865 shipwreck.
On a pitch black night at about 1:00 a.m. on April 25, the steamer Massachusetts collided with the barge Black Diamond, off the Blackistone Island coast in southern Maryland. An old, dilapidated ship, the Massachusetts was also overloaded, carrying 300 men, most of whom were Union soldiers returning from southern prisoner of war camps. The Black Diamond, containing a crew of 17, was among the craft plying the Potomac River as a participant in a blockade of the southern Maryland coast to prevent Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, from crossing into Virginia. Unbeknownst to the blockade, and making the event even more tragic, was the fact that Booth had already crossed the Potomac, arriving in Virginia on the morning of April 23. Three days later, Union soldiers killed Booth and captured an accomplice, David Herold. Thus, in hindsight, the blockade had become unnecessary when the disaster took place.
The collision ripped a large gash in the side of the Black Diamond, and its bow began to sink immediately. The two vessels were side-by-side when the captain of the Massachusetts ordered his men to jump ship to the Black Diamond. About 150 men did so, resulting in the Black Diamond sinking within about three minutes. Many men spent hours in the frigid Potomac waters. A total of 87 men died, seven from the Black Diamond and 80 from the Massachusetts. Of the men that died, only the names of 26 are known. The bodies of some of the deceased were recovered and received proper burials, while the bodies of others remain in the Potomac River. Stone is continuing her efforts to learn more about the deceased men; she writes: "a man is only missing if he is forgotten." (9)
Over the final three chapters of her eight-chapter book, Stone eloquently tells the story of the unfortunate shipwreck, its aftermath, the resulting court of inquiry, which found negligence with the captains of both vessels, and the disposition of the recovered bodies. The earlier chapters of the book consist of a great deal of stage setting, some of which may distract from the story.
The early chapters provide background information to the disaster, but also substantially more, including the actions of the Potomac Flotilla, which served throughout the conflict to minimize the provision assistance provided from Confederate sympathizers in southern Maryland to the Confederacy, just across the Potomac River. The book also describes the system of lighthouses along the Potomac River, the laws governing their use, and the system of licensing private vessels, including both the Massachusetts and the Black Diamond during the war effort. Additionally, Stone presents a chapter on the men aboard both ships and on the large manhunt to capture Booth and his accomplices in the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination.
The book concludes with eight appendices, which include documents and eyewitness testimony, a list of the known dead, their burials, and the memorialization of the incident. Stone also offers a timeline of the Civil War designed to refer to the disaster and its background. Shipwreck on the Potomac is well documented with notes and an impressive list of historical references. Many historical photographs and images enhance Stone's work, including a painting of the shipwreck by a local artist, Angela Wathen, who gifted her work to the St. Clement's Island Museum. A map of the relevant sections of the Potomac River from southern Maryland to Virginia would have been a welcome addition.
Stone's Shipwreck on the Potomac is a valuable study that examines an incident worthy of remembrance. However, as she importantly points out, other eclipsing events such as the killing of Booth on April 26, the surrender of Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee to Gen. William T. Sherman on the same day, and the explosion of the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865 (the worst maritime disaster in United States history), all helped obscure the tragic shipwreck on the Potomac.
This review appeared on the Emerging Civil War blog on June 5, 2025 and is used here with permission.
Seize the Day
Saul Bellow, author
Penguin Classics
https://www.penguinclassics.com
9780142437612, $16.00
https://www.amazon.com/Seize-Penguin-Classics-Saul-Bellow/dp/0142437611
Rereading Seize The Day
Saul Bellow's short novel "Seize the Day" (1956) is one of the few works that have stayed with me from when I first read it shortly after moving to Washington, D.C. to begin a career as a lawyer. It has some resemblances to Melville's "Bartleby" which I read slightly earlier. Like "Bartleby", "Seize the Day" is set in New York City against the backdrop of finance (Wall Street in "Bartleby" and Broadway in "Seize the Day") and the bustle and loneliness of city life. Many passages in "Seize the Day" capture something of New York and its people. For example, early in the book, Bellow describes the lives of the City's elderly:
"Along Broadway in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, a great part of New York's vast population of old men and women lives. Unless the weather is too cold or wet they fill the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subway gratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops and cafeterias, the dime stores, the tearooms, the bakeries, the beauty parlors, the reading rooms and club rooms."
Within this context of the City, Bellow tells the story of Tommy Wilhelm, 42, who has disappointed his elderly father, the renowned physician Dr. Adler, with the purposelessness and failures of his life. Wilhelm, who changed his name early on in the course of a failed attempt to succeed in Hollywood, has moved to the same apartment building in New York in which Dr. Adler lives, but his father remains cold and distant. Tommy is drifting and at a cross-roads in his life. After dropping out of college to pursue, on a whim, an acting career, he married and fathered two children and worked as a traveling salesman. He left his wife for another woman but has been unable to secure a divorce and makes heavy payments to his wife. He left his job in a pique when a hoped-for promotion did not materialize. Unemployed and alone, he has moved to the Hotel Gloriana on Broadway to be with his unsupportive, unsympathetic father as his funds dwindle away.
"Seize the Day" takes place over a day. Tommy has made another bad decision by entering into an arrangement with one Dr. Tamkin, a charlatan and a conman, to invest his remaining funds in lard and rye in the commodities market. Much of the book consists of lengthy scenes with his father in the Hotel Gloriana and then with Tamkin, with his double talk and palaver and his advice to Tommy to "seize the day" and live. Ironic, good advice from a bad source. Then the scene shifts to the broker's office, following scenes on the City streets, where those with little to do and little meaning watch the numbers float by on the boards. Not surprisingly, Tommy loses his remaining funds and also loses the redoubtable Dr. Tamkin.
With his wife calling to demand money and his father refusing emotional or financial support, Tommy is despondent and alone. Bellow works Tommy's story to an unforgettable moment of catharsis in which he comes to a moment of self-understanding and connection with others.
"Seize the Day" is a tightly-wrought difficult book and a classic of American literature. In a review published in the "New York Times' on November 18, 1956 upon the release of the book, critic Alfred Kazin highly praised the story and its author. Kazin wrote: "It is the intense world of the ordinary, the mean daily detail, the outrage of being alive, the existential sense of one's self as human creature, which is bravely at the center of Mr. Bellow's fiction. Each detail is cruel, plain, irremediable, yet one feels that it is about to burst forth into the radiance of consciousness." The memory of "Seize the Day" stayed with me. The book moved me more on the rereading than on my initial reading years ago.
Night
Elie Wiesel, author
Marion Weisel, translator
Hill and Wang
c/o Macmillan
https://www.us.macmillan.com
9780374500016, $13.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Elie-Wiesel/dp/0374500010
Night
Elie Wiesel's "Night" attracted little reader attention upon its first English publication in 1960, but it has subsequently become one of the best-known works of Holocaust literature. Oprah Winfrey featured the book in 2006, and it is taught regularly in secondary schools. The book also receives a great deal of attention from online reviewers.
It is worth describing the background of the book for readers who may be unfamiliar. In 1954, Wiesel wrote a long manuscript in Yiddish of the book that became "Night" called "And the World Remained Silent." The book was published in Argentenia but found few readers. While working as a journalist Wiesel translated his manuscript into French and sought publication with the assistance of influential French writers. Again, publication proved difficult. Publishers in France and the United States rejected the book. Wiesel's manuscript was pruned and edited substantially and was published in French in 1958. The first English translation followed in 1960, with a second translation in 2006 by Wiesel's wife, Marion. Some scholars have found important differences between the original Yiddish memoir and "Night". The former work is a lengthy memoir, while "Night" is short and spare and more self-consciously literary in character. It hovers between a memoir and a novel.
"Night" has a strongly autobiographical basis. The narrator of the book is Eliezer, 15, and he and his father, 50, are the chief characters. The book depicts Eliezer's experiences in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and attendant camps and Buchenwald from 1944 until liberation by the United States Army in 1945. The book begins earlier in the village of Singhet, Transylvania. It shows a picture of Jewish town life immediately before the Holocaust. The Jews of Singhet are expelled and transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars.
"Night" in its condensed form is a beautifully literary work with many levels. Wiesel captures in short space the horror of the Holocaust, from the transit to the camps, to the selections, to the world of brutal violence, fear, and slavery. The lengthy final section of the book chillingly describes the transfer of the Auschwitz inmates to Buchenwald in the face of the Allied advance. Readers are unlikely to forget Wiesel's depictions. The book also unsparingly describes camp life and its dehumanization with the frequent brutality that the inmates inflicted on one another. The book works on an individual level and shows the effect of the experiences of the Holocaust on young Eliezer. It also examines closely the shifting relationship between the boy and the aged father, as the lad is forced to assume whatever responsibility he can manage to protect his parent.
With its brevity, "Night" does not offer a day-to-day portrayal of life in the camps but concentrates instead on critical events and moments.
The book is also replete with theological reflection and with literary and religious symbolism. At the outset of the work, young Eliezer is pious and wants to study the Kaballah, the compilation of Jewish mystical works. Early on, the book compares the theology of the Kaballah -- of the "Shekinah or presence of God in Exile" with the coming redemption of man. Kabbalistic redemption comes to be contrasted with the darkness and evil of the Holocaust, possibly with the theological suggestion that the latter prepares the way for the former. With his experiences, Eliezer appears to lose his religious faith or to become angry with the suffering that God allowed to happen. But religious symbolism -- in the hanging of a young man at a climactic moment, in the observance of the High Holidays in the camps, and in many passages of religious reflection pervades the book. Wiesel's religious beliefs and their relationship to the Holocaust are left ambiguous at the conclusion of the book. Readers will respond differently to Wiesel's treatment of religion and the Holocaust. Secular individuals may disagree with Wiesel's bringing religion beliefs into the understanding of the Holocaust. Religious individuals, both Jewish people and non-Jewish people may take a variety of approaches, some of which include a sense of discomfort at "theologizing the Holocaust". Readers will want to sort through their understanding of the theological meaning of "Night" and their own thoughts on the question.
Many books, historical and fiction, have been written about the Holocaust subsequent to "Night". Wiesel's "Night" is evocative and an eye-witness account but it does not purport to exhaust the subject. "Night" is a book that deserves to be read for the immediacy of its portrayal, for its understanding of character, and for the beauty of its writing.
Bartleby the Scriviner
Herman Melville, author
Dreamscape Media
https://www.dreamscapepublishing.com
9781974996834, $6.99 pbk / $0.49, digital
https://www.amazon.com/Bartleby-Scrivener-Herman-Melville-ebook/dp/B07BRPMJTL
Bartleby In Retirement
I first read Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, The Scrivener" many years ago as a third-year law student. I had already become deadened with the study of law books and would leave the law late in the evenings for the large undergraduate library to read. There I found "Bartleby". With its portrayal of the drudgery of a mid-nineteenth century law office in Manhattan and of the loneliness of city life, "Bartleby" was not the most welcoming introduction to the profession and culture I was about to join. Still, I had been looking forward to the career and to a life within the system, as it was called then, rather than to a life of social anger and alienation as a critic of American culture propounding the sort of critiques that were common in the 1960s and early 1970s and remain so today. I worked for several years in a large law firm and then worked for 30 years for the Federal government before retiring.
In the intervening years, I thought about "Bartleby" many times and talked about it with family, friends, and colleagues. The book stayed with me, in the law office and out. I also returned frequently to other works of Melville. I recently revisited "Bartleby" in reading a new book of essays about Melville and philosophy which I had been asked to review. While thinking about the essays, I decided first to set down my own thoughts about "Bartleby".
"Bartleby" has become a much-read work. It is taught in college and high school and is the subject of uncountable academic commentaries. Melville's story has also entered popular culture in films and other ways. I have read in the literature about "Bartleby" but the goal is to keep the work fresh as it was when I read it and unencumbered by the commentaries that have shaped much of my other reading over the years. Melville's story is told in jargon-free language, unlike the language of many critics, but it remains enigmatic and thoughtful. Readers should tease out its meaning for themselves in their own lives.
The story is narrated in the first person by a "rather elderly man", a lawyer. He is not a litigator but instead spends his time with preparing complex legal documents such as contracts, wills, or deeds. In the 1850s these documents, sometimes running into hundreds of pages, had to be laboriously copied by hand by scribes, called scriveners. The narrator has a sharp, observant, judgmental eye and describes his experiences with two scriveners and a "go-for" in his employ. When he needs another scrivener, he hires a young, tall, quiet man, Bartleby. While Bartleby first applies himself to the task at hand, he soon responds to his employer's request to perform work-related tasks with the phrase "I would prefer not to", a response that has become classic in literature. As the novel progresses, Bartleby becomes increasing obstinate and the lawyer increasing frustrated. Bartleby is homeless and is found spending his nights in the law office where he subsists on nuts and cheese. The narrator is a decent sort and tries to help Bartleby but here too he is turned away with the phrase "I would prefer not to". The lawyer is driven to find another office and Bartleby is ultimately carried away as a vagrant to the Tombs where he soon dies. The narrator hears stories of Bartleby's lost earlier life working in dead-letters at the post office. The lawyer's final observation is: "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity"! They are words of compassion.
When I read the story years ago, I saw it as showing loneliness and the sense of frustration in the lives lived by many. Melville, was not fond of the type of life he portrayed in "Bartleby". Still, the book was not entirely off-putting in its portrayal of urban life and of life in a law office. There is a sense of necessity in the book which presents its story as part of the human condition rather than as a consequence only of American culture and society which could be changed and cured. The story assumes a religious cast as the narrator reflects on his experiences, reads the various views of theologian Jonathan Edwards and scientist Joseph Priestly on the nature of necessity and thinks about the Biblical injunction: "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another." The narrator finds a sense of compassion in his own lonely life that he hadn't had before.
The story over the years I think taught me about loneliness and solitude but also about promise. I think it helped cultivate in me a sense of detachment while reinforcing the value of work and of carrying on in the everyday world in which one finds oneself which too has its value. It is a book of sadness and hope which has stayed with me. "Bartleby" finds its readers among the young. It is a story to be taken to heart individually and personally.
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Roisin Smyth's Bookshelf
Lucky Hitler's Big Mistakes
Paul Ballard-Whyte
Pen & Sword Military
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
9781399074377, $17.99
https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Hitlers-Mistakes-Paul-Ballard-Whyte/dp/1399074377
Synopsis: Lucky Hitler's Big Mistakes is the debut work of Paul Ballard-Whyte, in which he explains that Adolf Hitler's Great War military experiences in no way qualified him for supreme command.
Yet by July 1940, under his personal leadership the Third Reich's armed forces had defeated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France. The invasion of Great Britain was a distinct reality following Dunkirk. Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania had become allies along with the acquiescent military powers of Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain.
Storm clouds were gathering, most notably the disastrous decision to tear up the treaty with the Soviet Union and launch Operation Barbarossa in 1941. How far was it good luck that gave Hitler his sensational early political and military successes?
Certainly fortune played a major role in his survival from many assassination attempts and sex scandals. The author concludes, from 1941 onwards, the Fuhrer's downfall was entirely attributable to military misjudgments that he alone made.
Critique: This book is very well-written, and Paul Ballard-Whyte has an engaging and humorous writing style. However, history needs to be based on solid facts, and this book has several mistakes in it.
For starters, Hitler failed to gain admission to the Vienna Academy of Arts, not an art school in Munich. And Hitler didn't appoint Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of the Armed Forces in 1938 - he took that role himself. The Kristallnacht pogrom happened in 1938, not 1937. And Rommel's first name was Erwin, not Ernst.
These are only a few mistakes within the book. Such errors really undermines confidence in the value of the book, and are surprising from a history teacher. There are better books on this subject.
Editorial Note: Paul Ballard-Whyte was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and has been living now in Oxford, England for the past twenty years. He studied British history at Sunderland University and graduated with a First Class Honours Degree.
Before becoming Head of History and rugby coach at an Oxfordshire Prep School, he was a successful businessman in Travel, Personnel, Restaurant and Hotel businesses, a Parliamentary Candidate in two General Elections, a Formula 2000 racing driver with the JKR Team, Scottish Superkart Champion and an Epee Bronze medallist.
Paul has also recently published a short story set in Afghanistan titled 'The Three Birthdays' and has previously written and directed several short films.
Roisin Smyth
Reviewer
S.K. Bane's Bookshelf
John Waters FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Provocateur of Bad Taste
Dale Sherman
Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
c/o Rowman & Littlefield
c/o Bloomsbury
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781495076657, $24.95, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/John-Waters-FAQ-Thats-Provocateur/dp/1495076652
An outsider and an iconoclast, filmmaker John Waters (b. 1946 in Baltimore) has become, with the passage of time, respectable. Known for such movies as Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Polyester (1981), Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), and Cecil B. Demented (2000), Waters has been dubbed the "Pope of Trash" and the "Baron of Bad Taste." The director and his works are the focus of this amusing and informative book.
Author Dale Sherman divides his text into an Introduction, 26 chapters, and a Bibliography. In addition to discussing each of his films, Sherman examines such topics as "The Filthiest Man Alive: The Evolution to Smut Peddler," "Dreamlanders: The Recurring Cast and Crew of John Waters," "Teach Me to Be Divine: The Short, Sweet History of Divine," "Extreme Behavior: Ten Filmmakers and Ten Movies That Influenced John Waters," "Nobody Would Give Me the Money: The Lost Projects," "If They Don't Have Books: Books Written by John Waters," "Hardy Har: John Waters and His Artwork," and "A Lifetime of Penning Trashy Screenplays: The Awards of John Waters."
"For more than 50 years," observes Sherman, "Waters has been staging a coup against the good taste of the American public. From the ultimate gross-out in Pink Flamingos to the amazing general-audience rating of his biggest hit, Hairspray, Waters has been subverting viewers' expectations with comedies that stretch past the boundaries of even today's jaded audiences."
Cinema enthusiasts, especially fans of John Waters, will be delighted with this engaging volume.
"I guess it would be witty if - as my last movie - I just jumped in front of the camera and committed hara-kiri. That would shock people, and it would cement my reputation, wouldn't it? But I've always said the only thing I don't want to be ironic is my death." (John Waters, Aug. 2000 interview)
S.K. Bane
Reviewer
Suanne Schafer's Bookshelf
Follow Me to Africa
Penny Haw
https://pennyhaw.com
Sourcebooks Landmark
https://sourcebooks.com
9781728295466, $9.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1728295459
My expectations were high for Follow Me To Africa. As a budding paleoanthropologist in my youth and a lover of the Serengeti, I looked forward to discovering more about Mary Leakey's work. However, this fictional biography failed to live up to my expectations.
This is a dual timeline novel. One follows Mary's life from the 1930s through the 1983 when she leaves the Great Rift Valley for good. Much of the focus in the earlier part of Mary's life involves her love affair and eventual marriage to Louis B. Leakey, a famous paleoanthropologist himself. The second timeline follows Grace Clark, a fictional seventeen-year-old girl in 1983 and encompasses only a few weeks. After her mothers death, Grace visits Africa with her estranged father. Though Mary initially didn't want the girl in the camp, they do develop a relationship when they work together to save a cheetah named Lisa.
I wasn't completely drawn into the story. So many words are devoted to this rather prosaic story that could have been used to develop Mary's character. The prose is rather straightforward and the vocabulary seemed more in tune with a young adult novel. I would have liked something a bit more sophisticated.
Unspoken
Jann Alexander
https://www.jannalexander.com
Black Rose Writing
https://www.blackrosewriting.com
9781685136222, $6.99
https://www.amazon.com/Unspoken-Dust-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B0F2GMQF75
Unspoken brings to life a resilient eleven-year-old girl, Ruby Lee Becker, whose family and farm are trapped in the double whammy of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The recurrent dust storms kill her baby sister and grandmother and leave Ruby with weakened lungs. To save Ruby's life, her father packs her off to Waco, Texas, to live with an aunt. Ruby, though, internalizes the feeling that she's sent away because she caused the deaths of her baby sister and grandmother. Ruby's mother, Willa Mae, devastated by the triple loss of two daughters and her own mother, sinks into a devastating depression and is committed to an insane asylum by her husband.
When her aunt dies, Ruby is placed in a state home for children. I particularly enjoyed her unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After twenty years of struggling to return home, Ruby becomes a crop duster and rebuilds the family's farm, hoping to reunite the family.
The story is told in chronological order, with sections separated by year, and from two points of view, Ruby and her mother. Much of the mother's POV is told through her journaling while at the Wichita Falls State Hospital, where she reflects upon her life as a future artist who studies with Georgia O'Keeffe. Instead, Willa marries a Texas Panhandle farmer. These journal entries are all italicized, and reading that much italicized print was difficult.
Unspoken, book one of the proposed Dust series, ends in a cliffhanger with Ruby about to marry a man who's really not suited for her and, having rescued her mother from the state hospital, hoping to reunite with her mother once her mind clears from electroshock and other horrific treatments she endured while an inmate.
We Burn Daylight
Bret Anthony Johnston
Random House
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com
9780399590139, $13.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399590145
We Burn Daylight is a contemporary western set in Waco, Texas, beginning in 1993. Though it's based on the David Koresh/Branch Davidian standoff with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and later the FBI, it's not a definitive play-by-play history of those events; rather it is the setting of a contemporary Romeo and Juliet. Royal (Roy) is a fourteen-year-old boy, the younger son of the local sheriff and a nurse and whose elder brother is serving in Iraq. Roy's love interest is Jaye, who tags along when her mother leaves her husband and California to follow Perry Cullen, a charismatic religious leader who has set up a compound in Texas. Their relationship with highly emotional yet restrained. The reader constantly wonders how it will play out with one lover trapped in the commune with a quirky religious leader who grooms young girls, and the other on the outside, on the side of law and order.
The story is told from the points of view of Roy and Jaye that show their relationship and its growth. There are interspersed podcast segments from 2024. I was initially somewhat on the fence about the use of these podcasts. Early on, they are so terse that it's hard to tell how they fit in with Jaye and Roy's story. Later, I could see they provided the background for the main story. Johnson's prose is succinct, forceful, yet elegant with some truly lovely turns of phrases and the ability to, with spartan words, fully develop his characters. As a West Texas native, I appreciated his ability to capture both the sparseness and richness of the landscape - and its laconic inhabitants.
Return to Sender
Craig Johnson
Viking
https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks
9780593830710, $14.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593830709
Return to Sender is the 21st book in Craig Johnson's "Longmire" mystery series, not counting multiple novellas and short stories. Each is a continuation of the adventures of Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. In this novel, Walt goes undercover to investigate the disappearance of Blair McGowan, who has the longest postal route, 307 miles, through rough country.
Walt takes over her route, searching for any clues she may have left behind. He discovers that she claims she was abducted by aliens and made a Hollywood documentary about her extraterrestrial experiences. His search for her takes him into the Red Desert to deal with a cult planning on their own escape into the stars. As always, Walt's struggles against the bad guys lead him into a personal spiritual quest that maintains his mental and emotional gumption while his 6'5" frame performs what, to most, would be superhuman deeds. Walt is morally straight and something of a Luddite. He actually buys a cell phone - his first - but doesn't know how to use it.
This series is always superlative. I've read every one, and I always pre-order the next year's installment.
Goddess
Kelly Gardiner
HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9781460702499, $5.99
https://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Kelly-Gardiner-2015-10-06/dp/B0186GY5O6
Goddess should have had everything I enjoy in books: an ahead-of-her-time, gender-swapping heroine with the swordsmanship of a musketeer and the voice of a La Scala operatic superstar. Despite her mind-boggling skills, fascinating life, and flamboyant lifestyle, I barely made it through this book. This quasi-biography of Julie d'Aubigny (AKA Mademoiselle la Maupain), who lived in seventeenth-century France, falls flat - though it was well-researched.
Raised by a single father, who trained Louis XIV's (the Sun King's) musketeers, Julie surpasses her peers in swordsmanship and stamina. By age thirteen, she is the mistress of the king's Master of Horse, the much-older Comte d'Armagnac. By sixteen she falls in love with a girl who is packed off to a convent when their relationship is discovered. Julie breaks her love interest, Clara, out of the convent and is on the run, eventually sentenced to death for her crimes. She survives, is pardoned by the King, and goes on to become a star of the Paris Opera.
In sections labeled with terms from the stage (Recitative, Duet, Minuet, Ensemble), the story is told in first person (Recitative) as Julie tells her story to a nameless, faceless, voiceless monk who is purportedly writing her story as much as offering her solace - and possibly final rites - during her final days when she has retreated to a convent to die at age thirty-three. In other sections, the story is told in omniscient point-of-view and fleshes out her life. However, since in the Recitative sections, Julie has already given details of the chapter that follows, I found it repetitious to re-read those same details in the sections that follow. Additionally, there is so much glorification of Julie by herself in the Recitative sections and by literally everyone else in the other sections, that there is little room for anything else. The book could have benefitted from fewer Recitative parts. Perhaps trimming some of those over-the-top accolades would have left room for increased characterization of every other character, the vast majority of whom are written in broad, superficial terms without depth.
Considering Us
Jenn Bouchard
https://jennbouchard.com
Black Rose Writing
https://www.blackrosewriting.com
9781685135522, $21.95
https://www.amazon.com/Considering-Us-Jenn-Bouchard/dp/1685135528
Considering Us is a cute food-related romance/women's fiction novel. In college, Devon Paige meets Kyle Holling, they have an instant connection, but after an intense night of talking, he goes to London. They never meet again.
In the meantime, Devon becomes a private chef who makes the fatal-to-her-career mistake of sleeping with a client's husband. All her clients instantly fire her with the exception of a reclusive pro basketball player who's addicted to her enchiladas and cookies. After this debacle, she's offered a job as head of dining services at a small private school in New Hampshire - where she reencounters Kyle, now a history teacher/soccer coach there. They both wonder if it's possible to rekindle the flames of that one night fifteen years earlier. To complicate matters, Paige is tempted by Heath, a hot local paramedic. She must handle the challenges of her basketball client, a new job, an old love, a new love, complications such as teaching cooking to the daughter of the client whose husband she had an affair with, and fallout from a gossip rag, the school's underground newspaper.
The Memory Hunters
Mia Tsai
Erewhon Books
https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/erewhonbooks
9781645662082, $28.00
https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Hunters-Mia-Tsai/dp/164566208X
The Memory Hunters centers around a society in which scientists extract memories via a complex process involving mushrooms and blood. The main character, Kiana Strade, comes from a family who lead the local religion's temples, but she wants to escape that fate and work at the museum where memories are housed. Because of her family history, she can "dive" deeper into memories than anyone else, an ability which has both benefits and dangers.
As a diver and a member of high society, Kiana warrants a bodyguard, a feisty petite woman named Valerian IV, Vale for short, who is from a distant place, but was brought to the city to be trained as a guardian. There is a slow-burn sapphic romance between Kiana and Vale.
I like the idea of this fungi-associated religion and feel that it is fairly well elucidated and is interesting. Kiana on a "dive" discovers the origins of this religion, and that origin is somewhat less well elucidated and which to mind (at least in this physician) prion-associated brain illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and mad cow disease.
The climax is a tour-de-force with rapidly changing allegiances.
I was mostly interested in the museum aspects of the diving. Rather than return the memories to the descendants of those who had the memories, the recollections are housed in a museum. I felt this was somewhat like not returning the Benin bronzes to Nigeria. So there are some ethical considerations here as well.
I hate reading an entire novel and then having an abrupt ending signaling the work has been set up for a sequel.
The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey
Kathleen Kaufman
Kensington
www.kensingtonbooks.com
9781496753908, $28.00
https://www.amazon.com/Entirely-True-Story-Fantastical-Mesmerist/dp/1496753909
The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey is historical fiction mixed with paranormal and horror aspects. It is a dual timeline story split between the mid- and the late nineteenth century. Kathleen Kaufman is a story about two women who share a psychical connection across time as they fight for survival against those who seek to exploit their gifts.
Tavish Laith travels the Scottish countryside hawking his daughter's psychic abilities to eke out a precarious living for the two of them. Eventually the daughter, Nairna, is recruited into a Scottish spiritualist group who hone her skills and introduce her to various psychic institutions who are eager to study her abilities. She causes such a to-do that she is sent to America. There, she is renamed Nora Grey and is again studied by various psychic groups.
Nairna's psychic skill is inherited from her pregnant paternal grandmother, Lottie, who, when her husband is killed in a mining accident, tries to get the compensation for his death that she is entitled to. Instead, she is whisked away to an insane asylum where she is experimented on by the so-called physicians that run the asylum. The two women become each other's spirit guides.
The Entirely True Story is a harsh look at the lack of women's rights or medical rights during the nineteenth century as well as the fascination with spiritualism.
Suanne Schafer, Reviewer
www.SuanneSchaferAuthor.com
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
Kinship Medicine: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves
Wendy Johnson, M.D.
North Atlantic Books
www.northatlanticbooks.com
9798889842736, $20.95, PB, 304pp
https://www.amazon.com/Kinship-Medicine-Cultivating-Interdependence-Ourselves/dp/B0DK4N3M1F
Synopsis: Our modern way of living is incompatible with our survival, personally and as a species. Most of us intuitively know this truth, but almost everything in our society encourages us to ignore it. With the publication of "Kinship Medicine: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves", Dr. Wendy Johnson confronts this undeniable fact and breaks down how we think and act every day in ways that undermine our individual and collective well-being.
The antidotes to many of the causal factors of poor health (loneliness, industrial diets, systemic inequality, fear of death, profit-based healthcare) are relational, with each other and with the living earth. Through evidence from public health, sociology, anthropology, human ecology, and her experience as a family physician, Dr. Johnson will show you how:
We must incorporate an "ecosystem" perspective into modern medicine
What you ingest and where you live can reinforce or upset your body's delicate balance
Eliminating one organism in an ecosystem can affect all the others
Histories of trauma can be passed down for generations
Rekindling our relationships to non-human life is essential to our well-being
Being closer to death can release some of its power over us
Actions of communities will be stronger and more lasting than any individual efforts
"Kinship Medicine" offers a clear vision of what a new society might look like, methods to accomplish this transformation, and concrete examples of where it is being done successfully.
Critique: A seminal, timely, and groundbreaking study, "Kinship Medicine: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves" by Dr. Wendy Johnson is exceptionally informative and thoroughly reader friendly in organization and presentation. Life changing, life enhancing, life enriching, "Kinship Medicine" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library collections and supplemental Sociology of Medicine curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subjects of Self-Help/Self-Improvement and Environmentalism that this paperback edition of "Kinship Medicine" from North Atlantic Books is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Dr. Wendy Johnson (https://wendyjohnsonmd.com) is a family physician, public health professor, activist, and writer who has spent her life actively working for a world where everyone can live long lives in equitable communities. Her career includes stints scaling up HIV treatment in Mozambique, overseeing an urban public health department, and, most recently, directing a community clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has a Master's in public health from Johns Hopkins and holds faculty appointments at the University of Washington and the University of New Mexico. Dr. Johnson has been a vocal activist on many progressive issues both locally and globally and is a two-time TEDx speaker.
Guide to Lasting Love: A Therapist's 21-Day Program to a Fulfilling Relationship
Reta Faye Walker
https://www.retafayewalker.com
Brown Books Publishing Group
https://www.brownbooks.com
9781612546971, $24.95, HC, 288pp
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Lasting-Love-Therapists-Relationship/dp/1612546978
Synopsis: "We just don't understand what happened. It was so good in the beginning."
For master certified relationship counselor Reta Faye Walker, this confession has been a repeated theme from disconnected couples for over twenty years.
Deeply informed by her own experience of divorce, Walker knows that when a couple begins to anguish over the "good times" of the past, their relationship has reached a critical juncture. It's likely time to make the most important decision of the rest of their lives: exit and seek a new, temporary romance, or engage in authentic conversation fueled by daring openness, deep listening, emotional insight, endless curiosity, and a desire to overcome any obstacle-together.
Understanding that many people hold a fairy-tale picture of love as a pretty lie built on the fickle recollection of honeymoon ecstasy, Walker shows us how building a foundation of understanding can help lead to true, lasting love that grows richer by the day.
With the publication of "Guide to Lasting Love: A Therapist's 21-Day Program to a Fulfilling Relationship", Walker teaches couples how to:
Move away from destructive criticism and toward constructive empathy
Surmount the difficulties of personality differences and enjoy their rewards
Effectively reduce their stress through team cooperation
Investigate their "unconscious agenda" in order to set more reasonable expectations
Reinvigorate intimacy with out-of-the-box thinking
Now happily married with credit to her own relationship strategies, Walker knows firsthand that just because bonds break does not mean they are meant to be broken-they're just waiting for the real conversation-and the possibility for love's lasting return-to begin
Critique: Exceptional, insightful, and an ideal DIY introduction restoring romance and mutual appreciation to strained and problematic marital relations, "Guide to Lasting Love: A Therapist's 21-Day Program to a Fulfilling Relationship" is the next best thing to actually sitting in a live couples treatment session with a therapist/counselor. Thoroughly 'reader/user' friendly in organization and presentation, "Guide to Lasting Love" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Marriage oriented Self-Help/Self-Improvement collections. It should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Guide to Lasting Love: A Therapist's 21-Day Program to a Fulfilling Relationship" from the Brown Books Publishing Group is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $17.99).
Editorial Note: Reta Faye Walker (https://www.retafayewalker.com) is a seasoned relationship expert with a passion to guide couples into a conscious relationship. Her curiosity about the delicate nuances of human connections was sparked in her earliest years and grew as she navigated the pain of her divorce. Since then, Reta has spent hundreds of hours pursuing an understanding of human behavior as a student of social sciences, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, marriage, and family.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
Divrei Halev
Rabbi Ronald D. Price
Gefen Publishing House
www.gefenpublishing.com
9789657801543, $29.95, HC, 450pp
https://www.amazon.com/Divrei-Thoughts-Professor-Halivni-Portion/dp/9657801540
Synopsis: "Divrei Halev: Thoughts of Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni on the Weekly Torah Portion" is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Rabbi Ronald D. Price and his teacher, the world-renowned Talmudic scholar Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni, of blessed memory.
Nearly every week from 2008 to 2012, Rav Halivni shared a thought with Rabbi Price on the weekly Torah portion, which the student faithfully recorded. Divrei Halev includes over two hundred brief divrei Torah spread across all fifty-four parashiyot.
Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni (1927 - 2022) was one of the most profound Talmudic scholars and theological voices of the postwar era. A Holocaust survivor, Halivni went on to shape generations of students through his decades of teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University, and the Institute of Traditional Judaism.
Renowned for his revolutionary "Stammaitic" theory of Talmudic composition, Halivni challenged readers to differentiate between the teachings of the Amoraim and the later anonymous editorial voices.
His magnum opus, Mekorot u-Mesorot, remains a cornerstone of critical Talmud study. A deeply committed halakhist and theologian, Halivni's faith was sharpened (not shattered) by his experiences in the Shoah. He offered a powerful theological vision that acknowledged divine revelation while confronting the human role in transmission and textual development.
His intellectual legacy continues to inspire those who seek to balance rigorous academic honesty with spiritual depth and reverence for tradition. The newly released "Divrei Halev", by Rabbi Ronald D. Price, brings Halivni's insights into the weekly parasha to a broader audience, opening a window into the heart and thought of this extraordinary teacher.
Critique: A fitting memorial and testament to the life and work of Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, "Divrei Halev" from Gefen Publishing House is an especially, unreservedly recommended, and unique contribution to personal, professional, and college/university library Judaic Studies collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: Rabbi David Weiss Halivni (September 27, 1927 - June 28, 2022) was a European-born American-Israeli rabbi, scholar in the domain of Jewish sciences, and Professor of Talmud. He served as Reish Metivta of the Union for Traditional Judaism's rabbinical school. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weiss_Halivni)
Editorial Note #2: Rabbi Ronald D. Price holds semikhah from Rav Halivni. Rabbi Price was the founding Executive Vice President of the Union for Traditional Judaism and founding dean of the Metivta, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. He resides in Ashkelon, Israel, with his wife Tziporah. (https://utj.org/speakers/rabbi-ronald-price)
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
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