Carolyn Alessio

MY GOODNESS By Joe Queenan Hyperion, 208 pages, $21.95 Movie reviewer Joe Queenan took a break recently from misanthropy and tried to mend his ways. In this witty chronicle of...

MEDICAL BLUNDERS By Robert Youngson and Ian Schott New York University Press, 400 pages, $18.50 paper In the 1860s, exposure to blue light was believed to cure every malady from...

OTHER PEOPLE'S MAIL Edited by Gail Pool University of Missouri Press, 275 pages, $16.95 paper `Other People's Mail," an anthology of short stories told in the form of characters' letters,...

THE ALPHABET IN MY HANDS By Marjorie Agosin Rutgers, 187 pages, $24 Growing up during the '60s and '70s in a Jewish family in Chile, writer and poet Marjorie Agosin...

DUST: A History of the Small & the Invisible By Joseph A. Amato University of California Press, 250 pages, $22.50 This one won't sit on your coffee table collecting, well,...

WORD COURT By Barbara Wallraff Harcourt, 368 pages, $24 We've all seen the carved-wood signs on houses announcing "The Jone's" or invitations proclaiming, "Your invited." Such misuse of possessives and...

EDITH WHARTON: An Extraordinary Life By Eleanor Dwight Abrams, 296 pages, $19.95 paper Edith Jones Wharton wasn't always encouraged in her literary endeavors--alarmed by their daughter's bookishness, her wealthy New...

THE FARFARERS: Before the Norse By Farley Mowat Steerforth Press, 377 pages, $16 Farley Mowat, one of Canada's premier writers, is the author of more than 30 books, including the...

POWER LINES: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago's Guild Complex Edited by Julie Parson-Nesbitt, Luis J. Rodriguez and Michael Warr Tia Chucha Press, 199 pages, $14.95 This energetic anthology commemorates...

THE ANNOTATED ALICE By Lewis Carroll, edited by Martin Gardner Norton, 312 pages, $29.95 Cheeky editor's notes abound in this "definitive" edition of the fantastical classic. When the Queen of...