Black Brilliance by Suzette McLean is a historical nonfiction quiz book built around one idea: Black history is part of world history, not a separate story beginning with enslavement. McLean starts in ancient Africa, where rulers such as Mansa Musa represent established centers of wealth...

Waiting for the Kick: A Midwife's Grief and Rebirth in Africa by Sheila Kimble-Haas is a memoir that opens in the rawest place possible: the months after the sudden death of the author's husband, Ric, when grief becomes a constant, buzzing presence she can't outrun....

Paris, More Than a Fairytale by Arabella Dubois is a really useful guide for readers who want to grasp how French people live and manage their daily lives. In this book, the author writes about living in apartments on Rue St. Dominique and shares lessons...

As I began to read Nouvelle New England by Chef Justin Bradbury, I was immediately immersed in the rich New England culture and its relationship with food. Chef Bradbury carefully laid out the connections between types of foods and dishes that were special to each...

The Big Picture by Pat Ferns follows the Canadian television producer from a childhood shaped by his family’s move from Winnipeg to England to his return to Canada in 1968, when a chance CBC appointment brings him into national current affairs broadcasting. Ferns learns television...

The Odyssey Decoded: Cracking the Code of Homer's Epic by Adrian Solas offers a fresh entry point into one of the oldest stories in Western literature. Rather than simply retelling Homer's epic, Solas walks readers through each episode of Odysseus's journey, then pauses to unpack...

When Mimi Nichter boarded a Trans World Airlines flight on September 6th, 1970, she was focused on resuming her studies at George Washington University after a productive trip to Israel. She never in her wildest dreams expected that this flight would put her in a...

Jerry Morton’s memoir, Finding My Way, traces a remarkable life across the American landscape, from being born into a roving Coast Guard family through the rough Wisconsin subdivisions, Pittsburgh suburbs, and Illinois trailer parks, to college in Kentucky, Army service at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina,...

Dale Zurawski’s The Travel Bitch: Bouncing Across the Globe on a Bipolar High really begins after an Amazon trip sends her back to childhood, in a home changed by her father’s death. Later, a bipolar diagnosis gives a name to the behavior that had already...

I expected to find a compendium of philosophical sayings and thoughts in B. R. Jallipalli's Waves of Thoughts: Thoughts That Changed the World, but discovered something meticulous and thoughtful. It is a book that shows how thought evolved from the time of primitive survival to...