Breaking the Bonds

How runaway slaves got North

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad By Eric Foner

Hell and Back

No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America By Elizabeth D. Samet

Sound and Fury

The flawed, tragic hero whose music defined an age

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph By Jan Swafford

The Big Uneasy

A city’s seamy side

Empire of Sin By Gary Krist

Solar Complexus

We may be alone after all

The Copernicus Complex By Caleb Scharf

Anything Goes

Prose for the people

The Sense of Style By Steven Pinker

Our Beastly Friends

A literary walk on the wild side

Zoologies By Alison Hawthorne Deming

Frozen Hell

An expedition gone wrong

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette By Hampton Sides

The Deciders

Two presidents and their war

Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in ChiefBy James M. McPherson / Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln By Richard Brookhiser

Taking Shots

A powerful plea for vaccination

On Immunity: An Inoculation By Eula Biss

Who Would I Be Off My Meds

Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering?

Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistanceby Laura Delano

Who’s to Say?
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A bewildering take from a noted scholar of Christianity

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesusby Elaine Pagels

Chapters and Verse

Looking for the poet between the lines

Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetryby Adam Plunkett

Once More, Without Feeling

Can a memoir be effective when it lacks any warmth?

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritanceby Joe Dunthorne

Electrons That Bind

The molecule at the center of everything

Carbon: The Book of Lifeby Paul Hawken

Food for Thought

A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats

How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Foodby Vaclav Smil

Splitting Our Sides

A new biography of a comedy pioneer

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Liveby Susan Morrison

In the Lions’ Studio

A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equationby Kenneth Turan

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apartby Nicholas Carr

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine

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