Book Reviews

4.9

Rainbow Gold: Building a Business That's Both the Journey and the Destination is a business memoir and entrepreneurial guide by David B. Hampson, published by MindStir Media on October 17, 2025. Drawing on his own winding path — from running a restaurant in Cape Town, South Africa, to leading Schrager Hampson Aviation Insurance Group in New Hampshire — Hampson builds a case for passion-driven, sustainability-focused entrepreneurship rooted in the "butterfly effect" of small, deliberate choices. Kirkus Reviews calls it "familiar but sound advice on building a business for the long haul," and that verdict captures the book's balance of genuine credibility and real-world limitation: the voice is honest and grounded in lived experience, but readers already steeped in entrepreneur literature will encounter well-worn territory.

The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals by America's Test Kitchen

4.8

America's Test Kitchen's The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals is a comprehensive culinary reference designed to teach foundational cooking skills through 80 themed courses, 400 recipes, and more than 200 kitchen tips and techniques — structured explicitly as an in-home cooking school for cooks at any level.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson

4.7

Eric Jorgenson's The Almanack of Naval Ravikant compiles over a decade of entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant's wisdom — drawn from tweets, podcasts, and essays — into a structured guide covering two central pillars: building wealth and finding happiness. Originally published in 2020 and now reissued in a second edition by Authors Equity (September 2025), the book features illustrations by Jack Butcher and a foreword by Tim Ferriss. It is designed to serve as both an entry point and a reference work for readers at any stage of life, translating Ravikant's first-principles thinking into accessible, consolidated form.

Ferrets For Dummies 2e (For Dummies Series) by Kim Schilling

4.7

Ferrets For Dummies, 2nd Edition by Kim Schilling is a comprehensive reference guide covering every major aspect of ferret ownership — from selecting and housing a ferret to nutrition, health maintenance, behavior, and medical care — written in the accessible, plain-English style the For Dummies series is known for, with veterinary contributor Susan A. Brown lending expert credibility to the health-focused sections.

The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness by Morgan Housel

4.7

Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money makes a compelling case that financial success is driven less by technical knowledge than by behaviour, temperament, and the stories people tell themselves about wealth — and its global reach of over 10 million copies sold suggests that argument has resonated widely.

The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz

4.6

Bob Spitz's The Beatles: The Biography, first published by Little, Brown and Company in November 2005 and reissued in paperback in 2006, is a sweeping, 992-page account of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr — built on six years of research, 650 interviews, and access to previously unheard private material. It drew generally favorable reviews from major outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post, yet also attracted persistent criticism for factual errors and editorial bias, making it an essential but imperfect entry point into Beatles history.

Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate

4.6

Before We Were Yours is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling novel by Lisa Wingate that dramatizes one of America's most notorious real-life adoption scandals — the systematic kidnapping and sale of poor children by Georgia Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society — through two alternating timelines set in 1939 Memphis and the present-day American South. It won the Southern Book Prize and has sold over three million copies.

Apr 4, 2026

Air Fryer Revolution: 100 Crispy, Healthy, Fast by Urvashi Pitre

4.5

Air Fryer Revolution: 100 Crispy, Healthy, Fast & Fresh Recipes is a cookbook by best-selling author Urvashi Pitre, published by Harvest (an imprint of HMH Books) on October 22, 2019. A follow-up to her hit Every Day Easy Air Fryer, it delivers 100 recipes designed to push the appliance well beyond frozen and breaded staples, drawing on fresh ingredients and Pitre's background in bold, internationally influenced flavors.

Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, by Scott Ellsworth

4.4

Scott Ellsworth's Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War is a narrative history that spans the final, desperate year of the Civil War — from the spring of 1864, when Northern war-weariness made Lincoln's reelection far from assured, to the April 1865 surrender of Robert E. Lee and the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Published by Dutton in July 2025, the book draws on obscure contemporary accounts and long-ignored scholarship to challenge the conventional portrait of John Wilkes Booth as a lone, disgruntled actor, arguing instead that Booth operated in close collaboration with agents of the Confederate Secret Service. Publishers Weekly called it "a passionate and elegant chronicle of one of the most dramatic years in American history, torn agonizingly between triumph and tragedy."

The Downstairs Girl: Reese's YA Book Club by Stacey Lee

4.4

A New York Times Bestseller and Reese's Book Club YA Pick, Stacey Lee's The Downstairs Girl is a historical YA novel set in the New South that follows seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan — by day a lady's maid, by night the anonymous voice behind the "Dear Miss Sweetie" newspaper advice column — as she wields the power of the press to challenge racial and gender injustice while searching for the truth about her own origins. Praised by critical coverage, critical coverage, and NPR, and recognized on year-end lists from People Magazine to School Library Journal, it stands as one of Lee's most decorated works.

My Husband's Wife: A Novel by Alice Feeney

4.3

Alice Feeney's My Husband's Wife is a 2026 psychological thriller built on identity theft, conspiracy, and revenge, set against the cliffside drama of a Cornish village — and it landed on multiple major bestseller lists, including the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly, on the strength of its escalating plot and a premise that readers found nearly impossible to put down.

The Fog and the Clearing: HooMan / Ai — An Orange Paper by Marc Cianciolo

Marc Cianciolo's independently published paperback The Fog and the Clearing: HooMan / Ai — An Orange Paper is a concise, essay-style work that engages with the relationship between human identity and artificial intelligence, framed through the dual lens suggested by its subtitle.