Reviews

Elizabeth Stice 3/10/26 Elizabeth Stice 3/10/26

As Entrancing as Snowy Egret Feathers

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America’s Birds by James H. McCommons (St. Martin’s Press, 2026)

Elizabeth Stice 2/24/26 Elizabeth Stice 2/24/26

Analog Intelligence

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future by Joel J. Miller (Prometheus Books, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 2/17/26 Elizabeth Stice 2/17/26

A Boys’ Own Forgotten Front of World War I

Elizabeth Stice reviews Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One by Nick Higham (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 2/10/26 Elizabeth Stice 2/10/26

Getting Beyond Grit

Elizabeth Stice reviews Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans by Robert J. Sampson (Harvard University Press, 2026)

Elizabeth Stice 1/20/26 Elizabeth Stice 1/20/26

From the Stacks: Islands and Beaches

From the Stacks: Elizabeth Stice explains what is great about Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a silent land: Marquesas 1774-1880 by Greg Dening (The Dorsey Press, 1980)

Elizabeth Stice 1/8/26 Elizabeth Stice 1/8/26

Always let your imagination be your guide?

Elizabeth Stice reviews Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination by Mark Vernon (Hurst & Co., 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 12/16/25 Elizabeth Stice 12/16/25

AI? Hard pass. Be human. Read human.

We will not publish reviews or interviews that use AI for any stage of the writing process.

Elizabeth Stice 11/25/25 Elizabeth Stice 11/25/25

A smoke-ringed mirror

Elizabeth Stice reviews House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home by John T. Edge (Crown Publishing, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 11/19/25 Elizabeth Stice 11/19/25

It’s Complicated

Elizabeth Stice reviews Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth (Thesis, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 11/6/25 Elizabeth Stice 11/6/25

A Feral Child and the Fringes of Human Knowledge

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron by Roger Shattuck, with introduction by Jed Perl (New York Review of Books, 2025).

Elizabeth Stice 10/29/25 Elizabeth Stice 10/29/25

Don’t Buy This Jacket… Do Read This Book?

Elizabeth Stice reviews Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away by David Gelles (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 10/16/25 Elizabeth Stice 10/16/25

A new book about Kant: not imperative, but interesting reading

Elizabeth Stice reviews Kant: A Revolution in Thinking by Marcus Willaschek (Harvard University Press, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 10/8/25 Elizabeth Stice 10/8/25

Katabasis: Impossible to Pronounce, Enjoyable to Read

Elizabeth Stice reviews Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, 2025).

Elizabeth Stice 9/30/25 Elizabeth Stice 9/30/25

The many men, so beautiful!/ And they all dead did lie:/ And a thousand thousand slimy things/Lived on; and so did I.

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Killing Season: The Autumn of 1914, Ypres, and the Afternoon That Cost Germany The War by Robert Cowley (Random House, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 9/16/25 Elizabeth Stice 9/16/25

World War II and the Fight for Freedom

Elizabeth Stice reviews 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche (Basic Books, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 9/4/25 Elizabeth Stice 9/4/25

Not a Road to Nowhere

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks by Fred Haefele (Bison Books, 2025)

Elizabeth Stice 8/26/25 Elizabeth Stice 8/26/25

A Contest for the Ages: Deciphering Cuneiform

Elizabeth Stice reviews The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster, 2025)