Former classmates at St. Anthony of Padua elementary school in Springhaven, Pennsylvania, come together to organize a gathering 55 years after their graduation in 1964. The process of planning for the event brings back memories of childhood friendships, rivalries, infatuations, and heartbreaks at this Catholic institution, named after a saint who receives prayers to restore lost objects and loved ones. This book is firmly rooted in a community defined by a liturgical calendar, celebrations of Christmas and Easter, the presence of priests and nuns, and ritual observances such as Mass, communion, confession, fasting during Lent, and choir practice. The worldbuilding is rich, flavorful, and convincing, in part because the author draws from his own experience of attending a Catholic school in Philadelphia’s suburbs. Two relationships stand out in the ensemble cast: The bond that develops between Paul Perdu and Ronald “Biggsy” Biggs, due to their shared responsibilities as altar boys, contrasts well with the clandestine, fleeting interactions between Paul and Mary Liz, skillfully depicting how the church discourages healthy mingling between people of the opposite gender. The cloistered environment also allows the author to look at how gossip can become a form of meaning-making in the absence of open dialogue, especially because teenagers have fertile imaginations. Donze’s critical commentary on the evolution of the church as a religious institution is built into the plot; the reunion is being organized because the school building is closing down due to “out-migration from Catholicism due to the ongoing fallout from the diocesan priest sex scandals.” In keeping with the school setting, the prose style is chatty, funny, and peppered with expletives at times, but it might have benefited from tighter editing in portions that tend to ramble.

Ruth Della Scholl is born into a Michigan branch of the Brotherhood, a fictional Anabaptist community, in 1963. With a strict, austere communalism, the group eschews materialism and competition and puts its members’ love of God above all else, but Ruth defies any stereotype of a fundamentalist. While other members come and go—including Ruth’s brother, whose disappearance is never discussed by their parents—Ruth tries her best to be a good Brotherhood “sister.” When a friend she’s made at a community college offers to help her escape the Brotherhood, Ruth is shocked. She doesn’t want to leave. Yet she scrutinizes every resentment and frustration she experiences, as well as occasional joy. With humor and barely suppressed passion, she describes her life from infancy through middle age through a very close third-person narrative. The novel is an accumulation of random moments: her distress when her 8th-birthday presents are packed away because she eats a candy bar her mother tells her to put down; the realization that the Bible doesn’t exactly describe the world—“leprosy still existed, pharaohs did not”; the discovery that a boy she secretly loves is marrying someone else. Along the way, Ruth sketches in an abundance of minor characters, too many to keep track of, from a young teenager who had to leave her previous community for “thoughts and deeds of impurity” to an older convert who rejects his former political activism as ego-driven. Ruth’s eventual marriage to an irritating but endearing husband rings all too true. Mothering her three children, especially the unruly son in whom she sees herself, is difficult. The Brotherhood seeps into every corner of her life, and readers will learn a lot about Anabaptist sects. But cheeky, inquisitive, and a delightful pain in the neck, Ruth carries the novel with aplomb.

Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University and author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate, begins with Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson. The only Southern senator who opposed secession, he disliked slavery but despised Black people. He treated them rudely, ignored widespread abuse throughout the South, vetoed congressional civil rights acts, and escaped conviction by a single vote after being impeached. Calling this a “backlash” is a weak analogy. While Northern public opinion had turned against slavery, belief in black equality remained a minority view. Blaming Reconstruction’s failure on a backlash is a stretch because Northern white support was lukewarm to begin with. Lyndon Johnson deserves praise for effective 1960s civil rights laws, but Southern malevolence cleared the way. Even conservative Northern whites were horrified at the murders, church bombing, and violence against freedom riders—all vividly covered on TV news. As a result, Johnson’s bills passed overwhelmingly, and more congressional Republicans than Democrats voted in favor. Sadly, malevolence returned following urban unrest. The beneficiary was Richard Nixon, whose law-and-order campaign and “Southern Strategy” began the country’s conservative turn, which is still with us. Impeached for offenses that might be considered small potatoes today, Nixon resigned. Supporters cheered when Ronald Reagan proclaimed the U.S. a colorblind nation where merit alone determined success. This didn’t prevent a backlash after Barack Obama’s election. He was accused of being ineligible to run for fabricated reasons and then denounced as an “affirmative action” president elected solely because of his race. The beneficiary, Donald Trump, maintained the colorblind public discourse while reviling proxy minorities: Muslims and immigrants, including legal ones.

McKibben, a pioneer in writing about climate change (his first book, The End of Nature, appeared in 1989), holds that it’s too late to stop global warming: “Our best hope now is simply to stop the heating of the earth short of the point where it cuts civilization off at the knees.” If we’re going to reach that best hope, we’ll have to force the issue and stop working at our current pace, which, he gloomily adds, seems unlikely. After all this, though, McKibben becomes a bit more optimistic, as he profiles technologies that can provide necessary relief. In 2024, he writes, more than nine-tenths of the world’s new electricity came from renewables; China now has the industrial capacity to produce all the photovoltaic equipment the world needs to replace fossil fuels; batteries are becoming ever more efficient and can increasingly be thoroughly recycled, such that we need not mine the earth for more minerals. What’s wanted, writes McKibben in a polemic that stays refreshingly shy of hyperbole, is political will, and this can be done. As he notes, California “managed to produce from renewable energy more than 100 percent of the electricity it was using for long stretches of the day,” and that figure is only growing. Still, he recognizes, the fossil fuel industry is fighting tooth and nail to keep Big Oil predominant, and the present presidential administration is antagonistic to anything that smacks of environmental responsibility, such that “the US might decide to become an island of internal combustion, and then the essential nation might turn out to be China,” which would suit China just fine.

Little Lion, a green-eyed cub with distinctive ponytail mane, dreams of developing her “grrrr”and “purr” into a proper, loud, grown-up lion “ROAR.” After a crocodile nearly snaps her up, she asks her animal friends for help. Hippo tells her how to “BELLOW” with one’s mouth, and Monkey explains how to “HOWL” from the throat. Little Lion can’t do either, but then Elephant suggests she try to “TRUMPET” by taking a deep breath and blowing it out. By tapping into what she’s learned, Little Lion finally learns to roar. Prentis writes in straightforward, unmetered couplets, employing simple end-rhymes or playfully subverting expected pairings, as in “Little Lion goes towards him. Crocodile snaps his jaws. / Little Lion throws her head back. She’s so surprised she… squeaks.” Carter’s illustrations render the savanna in lush and moody greens, purples, and pinks, employing strong lines, watery inks, and crayon shadings to striking effect. The cartoonish animals are full of character, allowing the story to function as both an unadorned narrative and as a personal-development fable. Young readers will enjoy Elephant’s colorful trumpeting and Crocodile’s comeuppance.