Making a Home Among Monsters and Martians

Making a Home Among Monsters and Martians

Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country by B. J. Hollars. University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Paperback, 208 pages, $20. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman It was around the time of my ninth birthday that I realized the Loch...
Musket Before the Ax: Howells and Ohio

Musket Before the Ax: Howells and Ohio

Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells. Belt Publishing, 2019. Paperback, 256 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman The year 1860 was a predictably good one for William Dean Howells, an up-and-coming man of letters from Ohio. In the four years prior, Howells...
An Elegy for Place and Time

An Elegy for Place and Time

On Homesickness: A Plea by Jesse Donaldson. Vandalia Press / West Virginia University Press, 2017. Paperback, 250 pages, $18. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman Robert Frost once wrote of a poem’s beginnings as “a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a...
The Doctor’s Mask, Removed

The Doctor’s Mask, Removed

Counting Backwards: A Doctor’s Notes on Anesthesia by Henry Jay Przybylo, MD. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2017. Hardcover, 256 pages, $26. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman On occasion, one can come upon good books by coincidence. An offhand recommendation from a...
Surviving the Robot-Barons

Surviving the Robot-Barons

The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines by Jay W. Richards. Crown Forum, 2018. Hardcover, 209 pages, $23. Reviewed by Jacob Bruggeman College graduates, young professionals, and people making mid-career transitions to other...