RaveBooklistSkipping from ancient China to present-day Maine to a future New York City, Wolff’s kaleidoscopic novel...reminds us that life so rarely becomes clearer with age. Wolff’s wild, hilarious, and moving adventure is rooted in reason and the tough truths of life: how easy it is to hurt the ones we love; that forgetting is easier than forgiving; and that life (with an elixir or not) is never long enough.
Tim Marshall
RaveBooklist\"... incisive, meticulous ... Drawing on his 25 years of experience reporting global foreign affairs, Marshall presents concise overviews that allow readers to quickly grasp geographical ruptures and draw universal comparisons ... This enlightening, shrewd assessment of the walls that separate us proves that there is actually far more that unites us.\
Paige Williams
PositiveBooklistAlthough the dinosaur is undoubtedly in the details, as it were, the biographies of minor characters occasionally distract from the larger narrative. Especially fascinating, however, are the intertwined roles of paleontologists, collectors, and commercial hunters—all who covet fossils and feel a claim to natural history. In the spirit of The Feather Thief (2018), Williams’ illuminating chronicle questions who has a right to nature.
Kate Harris
RaveBooklistNatural history devotee Harris’ debut is an homage to science—a love letter to geology, zoology, astronomy, and everything in between—and a travelogue-memoir in which she traces her academic pursuits, solo travels, and year-long bicycle trek along the storied Silk Road with her dear friend, Mel ... Vivid, pithy descriptions read like indelible poetry, exemplifying Harris’ reverence for the interconnectedness of our world. Lands of Lost Borders is illuminating, heart-warming, and hopeful in its suggestion that we will explore not to conquer but to connect.
James Walvin
MixedBooklistWalvin’s expertise shines in his handling of the sugar economy and the buildup to global wars when governments were forced to subsidize a product that seemed boundless in light of industrialization, corporatization, and globalization. The story of sugar is, Walvin writes, \'repeated time and again . . . across the centuries, and from one corner of the globe to another,\' and, unfortunately, Walvin gets mired in monotonous narratives and recurring statistics, and his bittersweet history lacks nuance.
Katherine Faw
RaveBooklistStartling, poignant, raw . . . The success of Faw's seismic story lies in a protagonist who, however improbably her life, is dynamic, true, and ultimately her own savior. Daring and original.
Tom Sancton
RaveBooklistAlthough this tale seems destined for HBO or Hollywood, to bill this a mere 'family drama' belies the staggering depth with which Sancton portrays his subjects, whose motivations, desires, and downfalls are 'so difficult to judge according to a moral code based on right and wrong, black and white, good and evil.' A natural for book clubs, which will drain a French cellar’s worth of wine while appreciating Sancton’s meticulous research and discussing this unbelievable cast of characters.
