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The History of the American Pharmacy (09/25)
In Lynda Cohen Loigman's novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, the title character works in her father's pharmacy and aspires to become a pharmacist herself.
Both the pharmacy and the role of the pharmacist have changed dramatically in the United States over the centuries. Pharmacies were referred to as apothecaries back in the ...
Leos Janacek's Piano Works (09/25)
Leoš Janáček (pronounced lay-osh YAH-NAAH-check) is widely considered the greatest Czech composer of the early twentieth century. Perhaps best known for his opera The Cunning Little Vixen, Janáček created not only several operas, but also symphonic works, chamber music, choral pieces, compositions for piano,...
Bloodstain Pattern Analysis and Its Problematic Role in Forensic Science (09/25)
The protagonist of The Good Liar is a forensic scientist who has developed the Blood Spatter Probability Scale (BSPS), a fictional modeling system that uses blood spatter information from a crime scene to create a 3D model reconstruction of the events. Although bloodstain pattern analysis has been used to help solve real crimes for over a...
A History of Tigers in Captivity in Europe (09/25)
The first tiger gets introduced just a few pages into The Magician of Tiger Castle as part of the wedding dowry for Princess Tullia, who is set to marry Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania. (Tigers aren't native to Oxatania, a fictional kingdom in what is now France, which makes the dowry an act of olden time regifting.) The tigers are put to use...
Ezra Pound's Fascist Politics (09/25)
Joyce Hinnefeld's The Dime Museum makes many references to the poet Ezra Pound. Pound was born in Idaho in 1885, grew up near Philadelphia, and spent much of his adult life in Europe. He died in Italy, his adopted country, in 1972. As a poet, he was best known for his epic The Cantos, published in segments from 1925 onward. Taking ...
The (False) Rose of Jericho, Selaginella lepidophylla (09/25)
In Nathan Harris's novel Amity, June, a formerly enslaved woman, is forced to relocate to the foothills of Mexico's Sierra Madre range with the man who has oppressed her since childhood. As her party nears the Rio Grande, she encounters Isaac, a young Black Seminole who lives in the area. She claims the desert through which they've been ...
The Epic of Gilgamesh (09/25)
Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid explores the history of the early city-states that sprang up in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the third millennium BCE, focusing on the beliefs, practices, and technological advances that impacted the lives of everyday people. One of the most important cultural artifacts from...
"The Goose Girl," Dorothea Viehmann, and the Brothers Grimm (09/25)
'The Goose Girl' tells the story of a princess who is sent by her mother to a faraway land to marry. The queen gives her daughter a magical talking horse and talisman, telling her to care for both, as they will protect her from harm. But when the princess loses the talisman, the waiting maid she is traveling with forces her to change ...
Ultra-Processed Foods (09/25)
Fernanda Trías's Pink Slime takes its title from the nickname of Meatrite, a fictional meat paste developed by the government to combat food shortages during an environmental collapse. Although set in an imagined near future, Trías's Meatrite could easily be inspired by the ultra-processed foods (UPFs) that have come to dominate...
Stolen Relics (09/25)
M.T. Anderson's novel Nicked is based on a real-life relic theft occuring when, in 1087, an expedition from Bari, Italy, traveled to Myra, in present-day Turkey, to steal the bones of St. Nicholas. Even today, St. Nicholas's primary reliquary can be found in Bari, where pilgrims can buy holy water infused with the 'myrrh' his bones ...
The Thunderous Òrìṣà Ṣàngó (09/25)
Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi repeatedly draws from mythology surrounding the Òrìṣà pantheon of deities from the Yorùbá religion, which is still practiced throughout southern Nigeria, other areas of West Africa, and the African diaspora. Ṣàngó, the bringer of thunder, is particularly ...
Conditions for People with Disabilities in 1930s America (09/25)
James McBride's novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store follows a community as they work together to save a young deaf Black boy, Dodo, from unjust institutionalization in 1930s America. Though Dodo's disability is physical, the state authorities are determined to place him in a mental institution called Pennhurst. In the context of ...
Black Utopias (09/25)
As Jasmyn Williams and her husband King arrive in the fictional Black utopian suburb of Liberty, California in Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, Jasmyn reminds her husband 'that Black utopias ha[ve] been tried with little success before.' She names two examples of real-world short-lived utopian experiments: Allensworth and Soul City. While ...
The Japanese Era Calendar (09/25)
The publication date of this review corresponds in the Japanese era calendar to Reiwa 7/09/10, or September 10, 2025.
Japan uses two dating systems: the Gregorian calendar, used in most Western societies and adopted in Japan in 1873, and the system of imperial eras (gengō 年号), which divides time according to the ...
The Mental Health Crisis Among American Youth (09/25)
In C. Mallon's debut novel Dogs, we follow a group of young people who feel lost and forgotten, chasing artificial highs through drug and alcohol abuse. Chief among them is Hal, whose internalized childhood trauma and identity struggles have led to major issues with depression and self-harm. Though the exact timeframe of the novel is not ...
Cinéma Vérité (08/25)
In Aysegül Savas's The Anthropologists, Asya, the novel's narrator, is a documentary filmmaker set to embark on a project based around the goings-on in her local park. Though not explicitly identified as such, Asya's project sounds a lot like 'cinéma vérité,' a style of filmmaking developed in the 1950s and '60s that ...
The Cinema Rex Fire (08/25)
In the southwest of Iran lies a city called Abadan, over five hundred miles from the country's capital of Tehran, with a population of a little over 200,000. Despite its relatively quiet presence, it played a crucial role in sparking the Iranian Revolution of 1979. On August 19, 1978, Cinema Rex, a movie theater located in a working-class...
New Perspectives in 21st-Century Arthuriana (08/25)
Since the earliest texts of the 11th and 12th centuries (which in turn are based on much older narratives), Arthurian legend has been one of the richest sources of material available to authors. Over centuries, the tales, characters, and concepts of Arthuriana have lent themselves to a seemingly inexhaustible wealth of adaptations, ...
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (08/25)
One of the characters in Kate Quinn's The Briar Club played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which existed from 1943 to 1954.
In 1942, owners of professional baseball teams and stadiums were in a panic. Young men who played ball were being drafted to fight in World War II, and several minor league ...
The Birkin Bag (08/25)
In Yasmin Zaher's novel The Coin, the unnamed protagonist, who has inherited a coveted Birkin bag from her mother, enters into a pyramid scheme with a relative stranger that involves buying more of these elusive items and reselling them. In many ways, the Birkin, a luxury handbag made by the French designer Hermès, is the ultimate ...
Weather, Film, and Television in Sunny Los Angeles (08/25)
In Colored Television by Danzy Senna, Jane, a novelist turned aspiring TV writer from the East Coast, reflects on her inability to get used to the warm springs of Los Angeles while also considering their utility: 'All that sunshine was said to be the reason the film industry had moved west back in the 1920s. Only in Los Angeles could they...
Penelope Fitzgerald (08/25)
The British writer Penelope Fitzgerald is famously known for having published her first novel at the age of sixty and then winning the prestigious Booker Prize for her third novel two years later. In fact, becoming a writer was always Fitzgerald's plan, but life led her down an unexpected path marred with painful, sometimes tragic turns. ...
Marriage as a Path to American Citizenship (08/25)
In Elaine Hsieh Chou's short story collection Where Are You Really From, 'Mail Order Love' examines certain realities of American 'green card marriages' and 'mail-order' brides (women seeking long-distance romantic connection and marriage through a service, typically to men from other countries), despite some very fictionalized elements. ...
The National Book Awards (08/25)
Jason Mott won the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction with
Hell of a Book, a novel that shares some characters and qualities with
People Like Us. In
People Like Us, one character narrates his own experience winning what is alternately called the National Book Award, 'the n-word,' and 'The Big One.' Mott is playful and exaggerated (let's...
Appalachian Granny Witchcraft and Folk Magic (08/25)
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire is about a witch who saves an Appalachian town called Foxfire from a curse. The Appalachian mountain region has its own tradition of using native plants to perform magic and healing, which is also referred to as root work, granny magic, granny witchcraft, kitchen witchery, or Braucherei.
Appalachian ...
Hutterites: An Anabaptist Branch (08/25)
Kate Riley's novel
Ruth takes place on a Hutterite commune in Michigan. Hutterites are a branch of the Anabaptist movement, a radical movement of the Protestant Reformation (other branches include the
Amish and
Mennonites). The primary tenets of the Anabaptists are adult baptism and the separation of church and state.
Hutterites were ...
Frances Glessner Lee's Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (08/25)
In
Sweetener, Charlotte and Olivia go to the Smithsonian to view an exhibit of dioramas created by forensic scientist Frances Glessner Lee to further the training and work of law enforcement in solving crimes involving a suspicious death. One piece they look at closely features a woman lying on the floor, surrounded by the ordinary ...
Displacement and Migration as a Theme in Speculative Fiction (08/25)
In Ruben Reyes Jr.'s short story collection There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, speculative fiction is a way to rediscover the experiences of first- and second-generation Latinx immigrants. Alternative history might commemorate the devastating effects of genocide or alienation while at the same time offering imaginative escape from them. ...
Oracle Bone Script (08/25)
One of the short stories in Ed Park's collection An Oral History of Atlantis involves a research group made entirely of Tinas trying to unravel the meaning of an ancient script found on a mysterious island. While much of the story is fantastical, the writing they are trying to interpret is quite real. Oracle bone script, in use from the ...
VR Therapy (08/25)
In Elaine Castillo's novel Moderation, content moderators working for a virtual reality platform are assigned to undergo mandatory VR therapy. This can look like meditation on a beach for employees experiencing general stress or standing on top of Big Ben for those afraid of heights. For Girlie, the book's protagonist, this ...
Generational Trauma in Vietnamese American Fiction (08/25)
In 1975, the US military withdrew from Vietnam after having signed the Paris Peace Accords two years prior. This marked the end of the Vietnam War, and it left millions of Vietnamese citizens vulnerable—those who had had close ties to the US military were now under threat of being persecuted by the new communist regime. An estimated...
How Satellite Imagery of Penguin Poop Is Leading to Advanced Animal Monitoring (08/25)
In The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog¸ Carly Anne York discusses how 'silly science'—science driven by curiosity that may not have an immediate real-world application—can lead to important findings and innovations. But before they lead to anything, these research projects, especially those that are unusual or ...
Shaanxi Cuisine and Biang Biang Mian (08/25)
Shaanxi cuisine, also known as Qin cuisine, originates from Shaanxi province in north-central China, a region historically significant as the starting point of the ancient Silk Road and home to Xi'an, one of China's oldest capitals. Its geography, straddling the Loess Plateau and bordered by the Central Plains, has contributed to a ...
Famously Critical Critics (08/25)
The jumping-off point for Charlotte Runcie's Bring the House Down is a one-star review of a one-woman play. Her fictional theater critic Alex Lyons claims 'people like reading bad reviews.' Apparently Lyons is not alone in this belief; the annals of theater history are awash in notoriously vitriolic critics.
Alexander Woollcott ...
Dunbar Creek and the Igbo Landing (08/25)
On the slave ship The York, nearing St. Simons Island on the Georgia coast, Igbos and other West Africans were below deck and chained to one another like property. They were to be auctioned off once they reached land. The Igbos were from the region we now know as Nigeria but that in the early 1800s was a series of independent states, ...
Artificial Intelligence in Literature (08/25)
As artificial intelligence has become an ever-present part of our world, more and more authors have considered its ramifications on our society. In recent years alone, a slew of novels and short stories have been published that explore themes like human nature, scientific progress, love, and human connection through the eyes of characters...
French Philosopher Guy-Ernest Debord (08/25)
Characters in Creation Lake frequently reference the French philosopher Guy-Ernest Debord, whose popularity has recently grown due to his work's relevance to digital culture.
Born in Paris in 1931, Debord had activist leanings early on while protesting France's war with Algeria. He also joined the Lettrists at age 18. They were ...
Hippos in Literature (08/25)
In Mina's Matchbox, a book filled with quirky characters, Yōko Ogawa introduces one of her most memorable creations yet: Pochiko, a 35-year-old pygmy hippopotamus. Flying in the face of the species' reputation as aggressors, Pochiko has a sweet temperament, charming the novel's protagonist and the readers alike. But she is far from ...
Cuneiform and Ashurbanipal's Library (08/25)
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak begins with the story of King Ashurbanipal (c. 685–631 BCE) of Ninevah, an ancient city on the eastern bank of the Tigris in part of what is now Mosul, Iraq. Although cruel even by the standards of his day, Ashurbanipal valued learning, and sometime around 647 BCE he built a library to ...
The Love Letters of Mariana Alcoforado, a 17th Century Nun (07/25)
In the final novella of Room on the Sea, Aciman has Mariana, a student and scholar, relive her ill-fated love affair with Itamar, a womanizing painter also staying at the Italian Academy, by writing him a letter. In fact, this story is a reimagining of a story of another Mariana, one with a centuries-old literary precedent: Mariana ...
The Białowieża Forest (07/25)
In Jennifer Croft's The Extinction of Irena Rey, humans' domestic and professional concerns mix with those of the natural world against the background of the vast Białowieża Forest, beside which the titular author lives and hosts a personal entourage of translators. The Białowieża Forest is a complex of woodland ...
Tea's Role in World History (07/25)
Few plants have impacted world history as profoundly as Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. Jessica J. Lee, in her book Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging, describes how tea is integral to both seemingly disparate halves of her family tree—her Welsh paternal grandparents and her Taiwanese maternal family all loved tea and ...
Southside, Virginia (07/25)
The area where author Henry Wise's Holy City takes place—Southside—encompasses a swath of counties in the southern portion of Virginia's Piedmont region. Southside stretches from the James River south to the North Carolina border and extends as far east as Isle of Wight and Southampton Counties, bounded along the western edge ...
The "Bury Your Gays" Trope (07/25)
The meaning behind Bury Your Gays' title becomes clear as soon as oily Harold Bros. executive Jack Hays orders protagonist Misha to do the bidding of the algorithm for the sake of his streaming TV show and kill off two lesbian characters. Author Chuck Tingle is commenting on the cynical use of queer representation in entertainment, ...
The Devil Personified: How He Shapeshifts in Literature (07/25)
The Hebrew word 'Satan' can be translated as 'adversary,' or 'accuser,' so in his nomenclature, he wasn't exactly set up for success. Satan, or the devil, is a figure who has origins in Abrahamic religions, well-known in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceptually, he has been depicted as a fallen angel, ghoulishly evil, as both an ...
Advertising for Brides in the 19th-Century American West (07/25)
The Californian Gold Rush, the American Civil War, and the lure of land expansion filled the 19th-century American West with men like Tom Rourke, the protagonist of Kevin Barry's
The Heart in Winter. These men came to work as miners, farmers, or ranchers—but they often lacked companions to help with farm work, ensure the continuity ...
Redefining the Role of the Mythological Bacchae (07/25)
In ancient Greco-Roman mythology, the Bacchae—also known as Maenads—were female followers of Dionysus (also known as Bacchus), god of wine and revelry. While some devoted themselves to him voluntarily, others were said to be possessed, driven mad and forced into servitude by his intoxicating power.
Dionysus journeyed ...
Weird Tales Magazine's Literary Legacy (07/25)
In Silvia Moreno-Garcia's
The Bewitching, Minerva refers often to stories published in a literary magazine called
Weird Tales. The magazine was launched in 1923 'to showcase writers trying to publish stories so bizarre and far out, no one else would publish them,' according to
its website. It was that very mission statement that led to
...
Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman (07/25)
In Girl, 1983, Linn Ullmann uses the tools of fiction to dissect a teenaged narrator's traumatic encounter with an older man. That narrator's biography has numerous parallels to Ullmann's own, including a turbulent adolescence divided among New York, Norway, and Sweden—the result of being the daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and ...
The Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) (07/25)
Ruben Reyes Jr.'s Archive of Unknown Universes explores the impact of the Salvadoran Civil War by contrasting one alternative timeline that shows a decisive victory by the government with another that shows the war ending with revolutionaries overthrowing the government. In reality, the Salvadoran Civil War lasted 13 years, from 1979 to ...
