What does a manga artist do when he lands in jail as severe punishment for a minor offense? For Kazuichi Hanawa, an established artist known for his fantasy volumes set in the Middle Ages, reality shockingly became a tiny cell for three years in the...
Once upon a time not so long ago, Americans were willing to risk their very lives for the privilege to cast their votes. Since the 1970s, just over half of U.S. citizens eligible to vote have turned out for Presidential elections (with the exception of...
Take notice: this is every parent's worst nightmare come true. Without warning, 15-year-old Megumi disappears, seemingly without a trace. Her mother has no idea why she might have left or where she might be ...
"This manga has a positive outlook on life, and so it has been made with as much realism removed as possible." Thus begins award-winning, prodigious Japanese manga artist Hideo Azuma's tri-part reminiscences that capture three highly difficult periods of his life, indeed presented with so...
Don't even open this book without a very full stomach, because you'll be salivating almost immediately. Culinary bad-boy David Chang, creator of the impossible-to-get-in restaurants of the Momofuku chain (noodle bar, ssäm bar, ko, milk bar, and má pêche coming soon) surely knows how to feed. He's a Korean...
First reaction: WOWOWOWOWOW! What a fabulous first manga for the new year. Indeed, nothing is simple about this all-in-one-volume story ...
Just before the last election, legendary former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca, then 82, wanted so much for Americans to take full advantage of the 15th Amendment ["The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United...
"Turkmenistan! It was a strange place," begins Jesse Lonergan's graphic travelogue based on his own experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in the central Asian former republic of the Soviet Union. Lonergan's alter-ego is "Joe" – as in average Joe Schmoe? – a bewildered American...
Before I even finished the book, I had already preordered multiple copies of Gretchen Rubin’s latest title, The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. Which...
Half the Sky is a remarkable, life-changing book. It should be required reading for all adults (and more mature young adults), but especially for us overprivileged, lucky-solely-by-chance-of-birth citizens of the West. If there is ONE book you read this new year, let it be this...
The eponymous Arzee is a diminutive young man in his late 20s living with his mother and younger brother in crowded Bombay, swaggeringly looking forward to the near future. In spite of the difficulties he's faced (much of which he blames on his size), he's convinced his life...
First things first: Indu Sundaresan’s only (thus far) short story collection (she’s best known for her lengthy historical novels, The Twentieth Wife and Feast of Roses) is definitely an effective read. Many of the stories make you think beyond your immediate world as they temporarily...
Four years ago (could say five, actually, as we just entered 2010 – already!), University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt and noted journalist Stephen Dubner debuted with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. That first duo-effort quickly became a mega-bestseller...
One Halloween night when Anne Greves is 16, she goes with older friends to a jazz club and falls in love for the first time in her young life. Serey is an older man, already in his 20s, a musician, who has already lived too...
Three weeks after 9/11, University of Arizona professor Adele Barker arrived in Sri Lanka as a senior Fulbright Scholar to teach Russian literature, feminist literary theory, and American literature to select students at the University of Peradeniya. But her own education about the history and...
Samuel Polk is 16, athletic, has good friends, and lives in a small southern town in Georgia. He tells everyone he's gotten over his mother's sudden death a year ago. While his relationship with his father isn't the closest, they've managed to establish a daily...
Cynthia Kadohata – who won the top American children's book honor, the Newbery Medal, in 2005 for her debut middle-grade title, Kira-Kira –returns with a heartbreaking story about a young Vietnamese boy and his special relationship with the elephant in his charge. High in the central highlands of war-torn...
Andy Nguyen is most definitely Australian, not Vietnamese. And yet his father insists they're going "home" to Vietnam, somewhere Andy has never been. Andy's Dad is Viet Kieu, a name given to Vietnamese-born immigrants who live in other countries around the world. Returning Viet Kieu...
From Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of our son's favorite Amuletseries [Amulet 3 is apparently in the final stretch of production, whoo hooo!], comes the "definitive collection" of his webcomic about a boy named Copper and his droll best friend, an adorably spotty dog named Fred. "The...
Winner of Le Prix Goncourt 2008, considered France's highest literary honor, this disturbingly powerful slim volume gives voice to the too-many silenced women living "[s]omewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere." Written almost like a dramatic play script complete with what read like stage directions – not...
