As Ted Bundy was to the 20th century, so Carlyle Harris was to the 19th. Harris was a charismatic, handsome young medical student with an insatiable appetite for sex. His trail of debauched women ended with Helen Potts, a beautiful young woman of wealth and privilege who was determined to keep herself pure for marriage. Unable to conquer her by other means, Harris talked her into a secret marriage under assumed names, and when threatened with exposure, he poisoned her.

To fully understand the various ways in which slavery has been depicted and described is a difficult task. Like any other important historical issue, this requires a thorough grasp of the underlying history, methodological developments over time, and the contemporary politics and culture of historians’ own times. And the case of slavery is further complicated, of course, by changes in the legal and political status of African Americans in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sleepwalking with Mayakovsky is a collection of poems that explores the relationship between chaos and order. “Robert Brown extends a tradition that unites reasons and passion, form and wit, history and memory. These often wry and always thoughtful poems are less acts than dances of the mind, as elegant as they are intelligent.”—William Greenway

In this astounding new archaeological survey, authors Robert York and Gigi York examine the history of Oceania and the Americas to unveil the significant role slings and slingstones played in developing societies. They present new evidence that suggests that unlike David who plucked rounded pebbles from a stream, inhabitants of the Pacific Islands deliberately fashioned sling missiles out of coral, stone, and clay into uniquely deadly shapes. They also show that the use of slings in the Americas was more pervasive and inclined to variability than previously recognized.

Small Comforts quietly probes the mysteries of an ordinary life when reviewed at middle age. Essayist Jeff Hammond, a midcareer academic who examines a variety of lifelong obsessions, frustrates any expectation that life’s fogs dissipate as we age. At stake here is the need for those of us who have reached a “certain age” to look at who we have become with courage, honesty, and humor.

Relying on oral histories, hundreds of rare photographs, and original music reviews, this book explores the countercultural fringes of Kent, Ohio, over four decades. Firsthand reminiscences from musicians, promoters, friends, and fans recount arena shows featuring acts like Pink Floyd, The Clash, and Paul Simon as well as the grungy corners of town where Joe Walsh, Patrick Carney, Chrissie Hynde, and DEVO refined their crafts. From back stages, hotel rooms, and the saloons of Kent, readers will travel back in time to the great rockin’ nights hosted in this small town.

Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850-1927) is a highly respected figure in the history of geology and paleontology. Perhaps his most notable contribution to his field was his discovery of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, one of the most important fossil discoveries ever made. In addition to his distinguished field work, Walcott’s career included years of service as an administrative leader in the scientific community: as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, as secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, as organizer of the National Space and Aeronautics Administration, as a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences.

During the first half of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania became home to a variety of German-speaking sectarians who rebelled against the oppression of European state-church establishments and migrated to the United States to form their own communions. One such group was the Snow Hill Cloister, which was founded in 1762 as an attempt to continue the monastic, communal lifestyle practiced at Georg Conrad Beissel’s famed Ephrata Cloister. In an engaging narrative that chronicles with humor and insight her research into this fascinating community of German Seventh-Day Baptists, Denise A. Seachrist tells the story of Snow Hill—its spiritual and work life; its music, writings, architecture, and crafts tradition; and its sad demise in the waning days of the twentieth century. A product of in situ fieldwork that explores the places and personalities behind the founding and prosperity and demise of the cloister, Snow Hill is a long-overdue study of one of America’s “experiments” in communal living. It speaks to another time and place and stands as a testament to the idealism of community and the tenaciousness of the human spirit.

Editor Kathleen O’Shea has managed to gather a wide selection of helpful excerpts, chapters, poetry, and even a short play in this anthology—all with a view toward increasing our understanding and ending the stigma attached to migraines and migraine sufferers. Unlike clinical materials, this anthology addresses the feelings and symptoms that the writers have experienced, sometimes daily. These pieces speak freely about the loneliness and helplessness one feels when a migraine comes on. The sufferer faces nausea, pain, sensitivity to light, and having the veracity of all these symptoms doubted by others. O’Shea, a professor of literature and a migraine sufferer herself, also includes an original essay of her own reflections.

“These precise, plain-spoken poems are limned by a subtle music, not to mention a lyric grace that is never overplayed. For in a world as harsh as this one, a world delimited by war, beauty is as appalling as it is necessary. Hugh Martin’s great achievement is to remind us of this necessity, and to assert the power of poetry as witness and as solace.” —James Harms