author:
DIANE ACKERMAN

Non-fiction
368 pages
W. W. Norton & Company Inc.

This is the true story of Jan and Antonia Zabinski, zookeepers of the Warsaw’s Poland Zoo, and how they risked their lives to keep many Jews safe from the Nazi Holocaust. This epic tale is unusual because the couple were practicing Catholic and generally safe from Nazi persecution. They took many risks to provide shelter as all compassionate patriots do.

Jan and Antonia managed the zoo and were well known as having one of the greatest zoos in Europe. The zoo was bombed during the invasion and caused massive destruction—some of the animals were later shipped to Germany to safeguard them from further harm. Then, to make matters even worse, the Nazis came back to the zoo and they killed many of the animals for sport, cruelly shooting them in their cages.

Jan and Antonina enlarged tunnels built under the zoo’s many cages, erected false panels in the main house to create hidden rooms, and even made many of zoo cages habitable. During this period almost one hundred Jewish escapees, at any given time, were living in these secret places.

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author:
LAURA MILLER

Non-fiction
320 pages
Little Brown

When asked to describe the single book that had most influenced her, the cofounder of Salon.com considered fawning over a weighty university-set text before realizing that “the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly—or the ones we’d most like other people to think we read over and over again.”

Hence Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book, an exploration of the work of Narnia creator C.S. Lewis. The title comes from a passage in the Chronicles where Lucy reads a magical, compulsive book that fades from the memory as soon as the last page is turned. The Chronicles of Narnia was Miller’s Magician’s Book, but Lewis has recently suffered a battering at the hands of contemporary novelists—the masterful Philip Pullman accused Lewis of being a religious propagandist, describing his fiction as ‘morally loathsome.’

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author:
KENNETH C. DAVIS

Non-fiction
288 pages
Collins

America’s Hidden History almost warrants two separate reviews.

The first: If you’ve read Miles Harvey’s Painter in a Savage Land, Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, Joseph Ellis’ His Excellency, David McCullough’s John Adams, any of the other exemplary books about early American history currently out there, or a combination thereof, don’t bother with this one. You probably already know most of it.

Conversely, if you haven’t, Kenneth C. Davis writes an engaging and intriguing look at the “forgotten” bits of early American history, the parts that probably weren’t included in your average high-school textbook. From George Washington’s early and questionable military career to Benedict Arnold before he became a turncoat, America’s Hidden History pulls out the juicy bits from the dry dates you already know.

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author:
RALPH ELLISON

Fiction
608 pages
Vintage

“I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Throwback to 1952. Ralph Waldo Ellison (not to be confused with the essay-spewing transcendentalist) was such a tremendous rock star that he only needed to write one book during his lifetime. That one book earned him a few big awards and has spent much of its shelf life collecting dust as a deeply underrated stack of paper and ink. Invisible Man provides substance upon which to base the ageist idea that, “they sure don’t write books like they used to.”

The book addresses the racial policies of Booker T. Washington and the rise of Black Nationalism in a post-civil-war environment where African Americans searched for both an identity and a sense of belonging. It is told by an unnamed narrator that we follow from grade school, through college, to New York City, to Communism, disenchantment and, finally, invisibility. But for a man who can’t be seen, his words are achingly perfect.

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author:
WILL STORR

Non-fiction
320 pages
Ebury Press

“Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage,” drones the impeccable Madeline Kahn in the classic 1985 film Clue. While others can attest to the post-nuptial state of physical relations, British writer and journalist Will Storr goes in search of life after death in this eponymous-titled nonfiction. Only his quest is a bit more than a search for ghosts and things that go bump in the night: Storr, an admitted lapsed Catholic and probable agnostic at best, seeks the supernatural with the notion that to believe in ghosts is to believe in life after death, ergo the existence of some spiritual higher being, whatever that may be.

Despite a massively weighty premise, Storr keeps the writing and the musing light, accessible, occasionally philosophical, and always entertaining as he goes through ghost vigils and hunts, television programs, bogus clairvoyants, haunted houses, the official Vatican exorcist, quantum physics-lite, and one truly terrifying encounter whose terror has much less to do with demonic possession than the religion involved. He reaches his own conclusions and is frank about it, though leaves very much open to speculation and interpretation by the reader.

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author:
STEVEN RINELLA

Non-fiction
259 pages
Spiegel & Grau

There is perhaps no other icon that is more symbolic of the American West than the Buffalo. It has graced our currency, our national parks and has even been protected by the U.S. government since the early nineteen hundreds after their prolific and near catastrophic slaughter of their species.

In American Buffalo, author Steven Rinella enters himself into a lottery in Alaska to win the opportunity to hunt Buffalo in the wild (and wins one of the coveted slots), embarking on a journey to take down the largest land animal in North America. While a good portion of the novel focuses on the actual hunt in the Alaskan wild, an equal length is dedicated to the history of the American Buffalo, from its arrival here in North America to its present numbers and questionable future.

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author:
OLIVIER KA

Graphic Novel
112 pages
NBM

In this touching story of trust and betrayal, Olivier Ka shares and relives a very painful memory from his past. With the help of illustrations from his friend Alfred, Why I Killed Peter explores childhood memories and the damage that can be done by those that we trust during the most innocent times of our lives.

Told in chapters from various points in Peter Ka’s life, we begin with his recollections as a carefree seven year old, living with his hippie parents and learning about religion and the deadly sins from his god-fearing grandmother. This dichotomy in ideology splits the young boy in two and becomes a recurring theme throughout the novel.

At the age of nine, Olivier is befriends his grandmother’s priest Peter, and their friendship blossoms as Peter takes Olivier under his tutelage, assuming the roles of friend, father figure, and confidant. When Peter does the unthinkable one night at summer camp, the young boy (now twelve) comes face-to-face with pure evil and spends the rest of the novel (and ultimately his life) coming to grips with what has been done to him.

This is not a happy story, and everyone is not okay at the end of the novel. But it does offer honest and sincere proof of the resiliency of the human spirit.

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curator:
JACOB COVEY

Graphic Novel
193 pages (Book One)
207 pages (Book Two)
Fantagraphics

For those of us that never tire of amazing art and fantasy (a pretty great combination for many of us), Fantagraphic’s Beasts! (Volume 1 & 2) sure delivers. Not only are these two books chock full of some of the best drawings, musings, and paintings of “hidden creatures” that we have seen in quite some time, but cryptozoology on a whole has never again been so inspiring.

From the Yeti, Unicorn, and Centaur to the lesser known Golem and Harpy, all of the artists involved were provided with a description of their beast and nothing else. Their depiction of their chosen creature reflects not only the defining characteristics and lore of the selected Beast, but naturally their own artistic flair. The result is as beautiful as it is educational, with each page serving as a reminder of just how we as humans have and continue to create ways to explain the unexplainable.

One does not need to read these books from cover to cover to enjoy their content. Simply pick a page and dive right in. Should you choose to spend more time with Beasts! (I suggest you do) you’ll not be disappointed. Be sure to check out The Golem by Marc Bell, The Triton by Josh Cochran, and Mimi by Alexia Stamatiou.

An amazing job of curating by Jacob Covey.

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