SWEET PROMISED LAND AND ROBERT LAXALT, THE STORY OF A STORYTELLER Aside from Mark Twain’s Roughing It, Robert Laxalt’s, Sweet Promised Land (1957, 2007) is
ANGLE OF REPOSE Because it is a new year doesn’t mean a reviewed book has to be new. If Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose hadn’t
INTO GREAT SILENCE Eva Saulitis’s memoir, Into Great Silence, is an astute blend of scientific discovery and imaginative creativity. For more than a decade, Saulitis
NOVEMBER ROAD To appreciate Lou Berney’s novel, November Road, you have to reimagine November 22, 1963. First, you must discard much of what you know
ZORA & ME, THE CURSED GROUND, the power of childhood memories to raise a forgotten writer back to a deserved literary recognition. When Candlewick Press
THE ATOMIC CITY GIRLS Because my reading and research interests have centered on Los Alamos and the Nevada Test Site, my knowledge of the Oak
RIVER OF LOST SOULS The Animas River, Jonathan P. Thompson’s “river of lost souls,” rises on the steep slopes above Silverton, Colorado, flows south through
MY DEAR HAMILTON, the unsanitized version of U.S. history seldom taught to school children. Dray and Kamoie set us straight. Clearly, my generation of school
COYOTE AMERICA, OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM’S MOURNFUL HOWL Although Coyote America is about the common American coyote, the title suggests, and its content delivers, a complex view
GRANT After reading Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, I had some trepidation about opening his newest book, Grant. I didn’t think he could surpass Hamilton (see
PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER When I saw a publication notice for Fraser’s Prairie Fires, I was immediately intrigued. Put simply,
WIDOW A classic cast of characters populates Sara Dahmen’s novel, Widow. The naïve easterner, a winsome heroine headed West for reasons revealed only piecemeal as
HUÉ 1968: A TURNING POINT OF THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM Mark Bowden, who wrote the phenomenally successful Black Hawk Down (book and movie), has
Search for the New Land shook me awake and into the world of Julius Lester’s Black experience. Sometimes my reading habits set me off like
WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? Alan Light’s biography of Nina Simone rhetorically asks, What Happened, Miss Simone? The answer turns out to be a complicated one.
HIDDEN FIGURES: THE STORY OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE I have always argued that equal education for all should be
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