Bookshelf

(Other Press, 2019).The winner of numerous honors, including a Kirkus Reviews Best Biography of 2019, this book delves into the life of the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, best known for his work creating the first comprehensive Encyclopédie. However, as the author notes on his website, “[Diderot’s] most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity — for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century’s accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.”

(New York: SelectBooks, 2018)
“The shelves are heavy with books on yoga, but they do not show, scientifically, the connection between yoga and the DNA,” note the authors, who explore the interconnection of DNA and kundalini (a latent spiritual energy), and how diet, lifestyle, and meditation can help purify the body to its highest potential. Meade is a columnist and author of 30 books.

(Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
The author, an assistant professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., “explores Queen Esther as an idealized woman in Iberia, as well as a Jewish heroine for conversos in the Sephardic Diaspora in the 16th and 17th centuries” by analyzing retellings of her life found in European and American literary texts.

Winchester, Va.: Red Moon Press, 2017)
A compilation of the author’s work described by the publisher as poems “of emotional weather, often wry, sometimes caustic, frequently amusing.” In this, his first full-length collection, “It is clear that when his poems do bulk up, there is a cumulative power and plangency to be had, more than any single poem could possibly offer.”

(New York: Guilford, 2017)
“This valuable volume presents a synthesis of four decades of systematic work within one of the most comprehensive, profound research programs on human motivation in the history of psychology,” noted a reviewer and professor at the University of Maryland. “It is a true milestone in motivational research, as rich in conceptual insights as it is in exciting findings. The book offers a formidable set of answers as to why people do what they do, and with what consequences.” Deci is the Helen F. and Fred. H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Rochester.

(Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 2017).
Based on a true story, the author’s first novel tells of Josephine McCarty, who in 1872 was indicted for murdering a man on a streetcar in Utica. Despite witnesses and common consensus that she would hang, officials called in a high-powered lawyer to aid the prosecution. Perhaps they realized the case was more complex than it seemed. “Compelling story which kept me intrigued to the last page,” wrote one reviewer.

(self-published: blurb.com, 2017)
A charmingly small book and simple tale of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem told through the wonder of butterfly metamorphosis.

(Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017)
This ­volume marks the 14th and final in a collection that contains over 5,000 broadsheets (a precursor to the tabloid newspaper) produced in Europe during the 17th century. With full-page illustrations and a chronological presentation, the volumes provide readers a way of understanding the political and social context in which major historical events took place. (Click title for more)

(Austin, Texas: Pandamoon Publishing, 2017)
This novel features Ezra Kaufman, a police detective, and Aisha Hassan, a reporter, who meet following an anti-Muslim protest. The author writes, “Confronting misogyny, homophobia, and the tyranny of teenage cliques, rejecting both fundamentalism and intolerance, [the characters] learn that they must chart their own paths toward spiritual meaning and personal connection.”

New York: Viking/Penguin Press, 2018)
In her second book of narrative history, the author provides a stirring history of women’s long journey to suffrage and political influence. As Publisher’s Weekly noted in giving the book a starred review: “Remarkably entertaining ... a timely examination of a shining moment in the ongoing fight to achieve a more perfect union.” The book is dedicated to the author’s beloved friend, Natalie Babbitt.