Lasting Impressions
Contest Winners!

Our Lasting Impressions contest winners are Wayne Scheer (first place), Karna Converse (second place), and Marty Carlock (third place). Read Wayne’s winning entry by clicking on the link below. We know you’ll also enjoy the other thoughtful reviews.

Bibliotherapy
By Wayne Scheer
At fifteen, my arms seemed to dangle from my shoulders like sails on a windy day and my voice covered the entire range of a Doo-Wop group in a single sentence.

Non-fiction

Sissy Nation
By John Strausbaugh
Reviewed by David Daniel
Sissy Nation is a curious little volume, at once engaging and infuriating, difficult to pigeonhole, and, in its odd, flawed way, important.

Taking on the Trust
By Steve Weinberg
Reviewed by Carter Jefferson
If investigative journalists had a litany of saints, Ida Minerva Tarbell would be close to top of the list.

Artscience
By David Edwards
Reviewed by Marty Carlock
Defining “creativity” is something like trying
to pin a live gnat to a specimen board with
one hand.

A Voyage Long and Strange
By Tony Horwitz
Reviewed by Ruth Douillette
When it comes to history, most of us learned desiccated chips of information from texts as dry as cornflakes.

Copernicus’ Secret
By Jack Repcheck
Reviewed by Kathy Highcove
A cloaked figure followed the low light of his lantern to the end of a stone paved patio, placed
the lantern on a ledge, and turned his attention
to a tall beam from which hung a long triangle
that pointed out toward the stars flickering over
the Polish countryside.

Willie Nelson: An Epic Life
By Joe Nick Patoski
Reviewed by Gary Presley
Author Joe Nick Patoski, or perhaps his editors, made a singular mistake with this biography of the original country music outlaw.

The Dismal Science
By Stephen A. Marglin
Reviewed by Mike Marcoe
The “dismal science” used in the title of Harvard economics professor Stephen A. Marglin’s new book is a Victorian-era term allegedly coined in response to the writing of Thomas Malthus, who famously predicted that starvation would be the result of population growth exceeding food supply.

The End of Food
By Paul Roberts
Reviewed by Rebeca Schiller
With the recent headlines on the food crisis, Malthusians and Chicken Little fans will feel even more vindicated for their “I told you so” after they read Paul Roberts’ important The End of Food, which presents the harsh economic realities of the modern food system.

Artists in Exile
By Joseph Horowitz
Reviewed by Alan Goodman
D-E-R-A-C-I-N-A-T-E.

This is not what you are left with when your caffeine flies to Rio.

Fiction

Mudbound
By Hillary Jordan
Reviewed by Julie McGuire
In 1939, thirty-one-year old virgin Laura Chapppell is headed towards spinsterhood.