Susan Babbitt

Leonard Cohen Untold Stories could not have happened before social media. Through Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp, Michael Posner located people who once knew Leonard Cohen and fell away.

In boyhood, enthralled by an old radio recovered from a dump, Darran Anderson accessed “the world of adults . . .

“This book is personal, deeply and bravely thoughtful, and creatively expressed. . . . it can serve as a tool for the politically engaged.”

Jarvis Jay Masters has been on death row in San Quentin State Prison for 30 years. He became famous after renowned Shambhala Buddhist, Pema Chodron, wrote about him.

According to Jorge Castañeda, it is “as if the United states seeks to challenge foreign writers to explain it, confident they will fail.” His own attempt is for US citizens, not foreigners, at a “c

The unifying thread in this thoughtful collection is being foreign in Palestine: Ajnabi or ajnabiya in Arabic.

On June 1, 1943, Germans “pacified” the Polish village of Sochy. Anna Janko’s mother was orphaned. Sochy had “eighty-eight houses, most with thatched roofs. Two or three made of stone.

Author Laila Lalami came to the US from Morocco in 1992. In 2000, she became US citizen. But Lalami does not fit neat categories defining US personhood. Neither, she argues, do many others.

Einstein once said universities should stop insisting so much on success: Success is getting more out than you put in. Character, though, is putting in more than you get out.

“Deaths of despair” are by suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholic liver disease. Their increase in the US is explained by indignity and loss of pride, not globalization, inequality or automation.

Emily Dickinson has been called the greatest poet in the English language. She is also “America’s most enigmatic and mysterious poet.” But she is not mysterious, according to Martha Ackman.

When Adam Hill, physician, sought medical help, he was asked if he really wanted to pursue it. He understood later. He was being warned it might damage his career. It did.

Dawn Newton’s memoir starts with a cancer diagnosis. Yet Newton writes about change and loss, insecurity and self-doubt. She writes delicately about human value and how to know it.

“The Soul of Care is important. Its significance goes beyond medicine.”

Sister Helen Prejean is known for campaigning against the death penalty, reinstated in the US in 1976, responsible for 1, 940 deaths.

Nelson Mandela wrote hundreds of letters from August 5, 1962, until February 11, 1990. Prison Letters is a selection.

The graphic format of a biography of Stephen Hawking has advantages. For one, pictures explain the science.

The Apology is a personal story of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. It is also about healing. It’s a controversial approach to healing, and the author is unaware.

Given the title of this book, one expects to learn how writing brings social change and, since interviews are from “the edge,” one expects that change to be radical.

Voluntary repatriation was psychological warfare. So argues this intriguing book about the Korean War.

Sleep of Memory shows how literature trumps philosophy and political theory.

In Prisoner of Pinochet, Sergio Bitar describes harsh imprisonment after the U.S.-backed coup against Salvador Allende in 1973.