Alexander Langlands
For those of us who like working with our hands, there is nothing as satisfying as making a useful and beautiful object we can use for years. Cræft, being skilled at creating unique, hand-made items sourced from nature locally, has nearly disappeared. Once, being a craftsperson who could …
Lois Sherr Dubin
Photos by Kiyoshi Togashi and Michael Waddell
When you think “southwest” or “Navajo” jewelry, you probably think big honking belt buckles, silver conchos (flatted “platters” of silver), and chunky turquoise rings at tourist shops. This style of jewelry is mostly knock-offs of the fantastic artistry created by …
Caitlin Doughty
The magnificent, hilarous and always fascinating mortician Caitlin Doughty (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) is back with another intriguing look at death.
Death is inevitable. But the way Americans and many in the west act, it is something shameful …
Jon Ronson
There is something utterly gripping and fascinating about psychopaths. The idea that someone is without morals or compassion, no internal brakes, repels and intrigues us. What if we didn’t have that little voice in our head telling us not to do something? What if we could do whatever …
Lisa Birnbach with Chip Kidd
Julia Chaplin
Finding our “tribe” in a melting-pot country like the US can be difficult. With every option available, finding “your” people is often a relief. These tribes, peopled with members drawn to each other by some basic fundamental values, soon spawn off an entire …
My Life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom
Jane Stork
Netflix made a huge splash with their multi-part documentary, Wild Wild Country, about the Bhagwan cult. While a lot of the focus was on Bhagwan and his loyal secretary Sheela, another member Jane Stork (formerly known …
You can’t help but compare Marsh to Agatha Christie as a grande dame of murder. After all, Marsh invites you to with the quote “It’s time to compare Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around.” – Dily Winn, New York Magazine printed on all of her books.
The …
John Kenney
There’s is something about the word “poem” that makes the average American recoil. Add “love” on there, and we’re rolling our eyes and getting out the barf bags. But wait! You haven’t read Kenney’s magnificent, hilarious, and deadly-accurate collection of poems. This is not the book you get …
Caitlin Doughty
Mortician and author Doughty takes questions about children and turns them into educational comedy gold. She tackles a host of disgusting, weird and fascinating death-related topics in a practical, and hilarious, manner. From “Can We Give Grandma a Viking Funeral?” to “We Eat Chickens, Why Not Dead People?” …
John Waters
The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
Water’s new memoir starts out with a tongue-in-cheek scree at his notoriety and fame:
Suddenly the worst thing that can happen to a creative person has happened to me. I am accepted. How can I “struggle” when my onetime underground movies …
Natalie Haynes
Haynes, a classics scholar who studied at Cambridge, compares and contrasts modern life with those of the Ancients (Greeks, Romans and some Egyptians). While we are often tempted to go with the lazy assumption that “nothing ever changes, people have all been essentially the same”, Haynes points out …
What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success
Kevin Dutton
Dutton’s book on his research into psychopaths is a fast, easy read with little academic jargon to bog the reader down. Clearly aimed for the armchair lookie-loo (hello!), Dutton amused and horrifies readers with stories of his …
Iconic Moments from the Past In Color
Wolfang Wild & Jordan Lloyd
This wide-ranging collection of colorized photos gives a rare glimpse into the past. Photography has been around for a surprisingly long time. The first self-portrait was taken in 1839, almost 30 years before the American Civil War. There …
Victoria Finlay
I first heard of Finlay’s brilliant book on an equally brilliant BBC 4 Radio Show called ‘The Museum of Curiosity,’ described as a “Panel show in which three distinguished guests donate fascinating exhibits to a vast imaginary museum.” This dry description totally fails to encompass the …
Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
The Princess Bride meets Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings.
Popular fantasy authors Dawson and Hearne gleefully take a whack at every fairy tale trope in the (standard) book. After being informed by the pixie Staph that he is the The Chosen One, Worstely, …
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse
Mycroft Holmes had three major strikes against it – 1. written by a celebrity 2. co-written with a professional writer and 3. a story in a major and wildly popular canon. However, after reading an excellent op-ed written by Abdul-Jabbar in the Washington Post, …
