It is the summer of 2020. Twelve Americans arrive at a mansion in the Hamptons. Everyone has been in lockdown for months due to Covid-19, but now they are free to interact with others. The plan is for “two weeks of eating, activities, and dating in a secure environment,” though the main draw will be storytelling. The guests come from different political, economic, and racial backgrounds, and each is to tell a story to the others about the impact of Covid-19. The group has been assembled by a wealthy man named Olive Mixer. (While the scenario may seem like the premise of a reality TV show, Mixer insists that the goings-on are not being recorded.) In this first installment of a series, six of the participants have their turns to say their pieces. These range from a nurse named Andrea who talks about “how ordinary people who work essential jobs stood up to this horrendous virus” to a part-time handyman named Ricard who doesn’t quite trust Freemasons. In between the stories there is socializing, games, and even a shark attack (not to mention large and varied meals). Food is mentioned quite a lot throughout the book—one character tells of a dinner in Montana that included “trout, pinto bean, and ham soup with fry bread, chillicothe, sirloin mutton” as well as “a dessert called kuchen, a cross between cake and pie filled with, in this case, flathead cherries.” Details like these culinary lists do not exactly leap from the page; what proves to be more impactful are the reflections of the guests, which do indeed run a gamut. Ricard, for instance, offends just about everyone present with his story, causing most to sit in “silent disdain” as they listen to him speak. The fictional characters’ sentiments are carefully crafted, offering an intriguing range of realistic reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this revelatory history, Andersson (Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man, 2023, etc.) traces the far-reaching influence of dandyism from the streets of Regency England to Antebellum America, Weimar Germany, and, most recently, the inaugural pages of i-D magazine. While the book does detail forgotten trends in men’s fashion like hair parts, canes, and long jackets, Andersson is more interested in exploring each sartorial wave as an evolving social subculture, investigating their unique complexities amid the “murky layers of the populace.” “Dandyism” was established as “a word for well-dressed upper-class men, but it also [became] entangled with a type of conduct and excessive attention to appearance that are not included in the definition of a gentleman.” Andersson adds, “Jostling with the upper classes were many middling groups of clerks, shopkeepers, and apprentices, who were eager to have as respectable an address as possible.” The dandy’s peculiar presence gave rise to a wave of rakish lowlifes attempting to swindle the public by looking the part. This “rowdyism and larking” ushered in the “masher” at the turn of the century, a ribald lothario who would lurk around burlesque shows to profess their love to the dancers. Later, Andersson keenly connects the dandy’s sharp suiting with trends in gangster fashion and the zoot suits of the swing movement. Present throughout this centuries-long evolution is the sneering eye of the press, which spurned dandies as “effeminate members of a third sex.” Andersson pieces together details on styles and their offshoots through a relentless feed of sarcastic articles and cartoons, deftly using these baseless dismissals as keystones to better render the movement. Throughout each case study, the author artfully accounts for dandyism as an amalgamation of both a subculture and the public’s reaction to it, and he harnesses that clash to stitch together a formidable sociological history.

Though yogurt is very popular, many people do not realize how simple it is to make at home. In 95 concise pages, fermented foods enthusiast Shepard follows up his 2021 book Smart Sourdough with a useful guide to yogurt making. Beginning with a brief and clear explanation of how milk turns into yogurt and the basic preparations involved, multiple methods of making and improving homemade yogurt are explored. Dedicated electric yogurt-makers, sous-vide cookers, Instant Pots, home proofers, and digital (smart) ovens as methods for yogurt incubating are compared, highlighting the ability of each technique to control the process and scale up to larger batches. A recipe for basic “Smart Yogurt” is supplemented by variations for Greek, French, and Mediterranean yogurts. Adding fruits, vegetables, herbs, powders, and juices during the yogurt-making process results in unusual flavors like chocolate, grape, and carrot. A section about improving yogurt’s digestibility includes two methods for making lactose-free yogurt and discusses extended fermentation. Deeper dives into tweaking homemade yogurt include diversifying the beneficial probiotic bacteria of yogurt and using plant-based starters, and, surprisingly, sauerkraut. After explaining how dairy-free “yogurts” sold in stores are actually “sour pudding that’s a yogurt substitute,” a method for making true dairy-free yogurt using soy milk finishes the book. Shepard’s writing is welcoming to the novice yogurt-maker. Veteran yogurt-makers who want to up their game will appreciate the later chapters. The importance of experimentation is stressed and humorously demonstrated by the author’s own experiences: “My tests with roasted cashews and roasted peanuts, for example, wound up tasting awful.” Brand names cited throughout (for example, Bubbies sauerkraut) are helpful to source ingredients, but are not imperatives, and underscore that yogurt can be made with items easily found in most grocery stores. Uncredited color photographs throughout helpfully illustrate different methods, setups, and results. An extensive index rounds out this slim but thorough book that is a must for home yogurt making.

In 1981, Simmons College art major Catharine Conor meets Tom Osborne, who’s pursuing a doctorate in poetry at Harvard University, where his father, Noah, whom he disparages, is an esteemed professor and scholar on the work of Dante Alighieri. Catharine and Tom become romantically involved, yet there are already signs of Tom’s mental health struggles, which are later diagnosed as bipolar disorder. When Tom impulsively sets library stacks containing his father’s works on fire, the professor hushes up the incident and arranges for Tom to finish his degree in London. Catharine joins him there and marries him; they remain committed to each other after a miscarriage, and they later have a son in the 1980s. She starts writing poetry as an emotional outlet and relocates them to the Massachusetts coastal town of Belle Harbor, mortgaging a house with a small inheritance and attaining a job as a middle school art teacher. Tom’s father uses his connections to get his son, who’s now suffering writer’s block, a job at a community college. The narrative then expands to introduce Emma Nolan, who previously lived in the house and lost her son in an accident; Toby, Catharine and Tom’s son, whose life is upended by tragedy; and various “summer people” renting out the next-door cottage, such as teenager Bree, whose interactions with locals have disastrous consequences. By novel’s end, Catharine follows through on a promise to a special person in her life.

This latest novel by Finigan may remind readers of such short story cycles as Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge (2008), given its sweeping presentation of several characters in a small town. The narrative explores their relationships to one another in ways that are sometimes-glancing but often profound. Catharine, Tom, and Toby receive the most attention, but Finigan’s chapter on Bree, and her return later in the novel, allows for a striking demonstration of how one person’s actions can resonate across several lives. The book’s most effective element, though, is its heartbreaking portrayal of mental illness. Catharine believes that Tom is brilliant, as do his awful parents (portrayed in several memorably chilling scenes), and he experiences periods of “whirlwind of hope and possibility,” then increasingly wonders “how long he could stave off what he knew would follow. Each descent worse than the last.” A scene in which Tom holds Toby aloft as a child, during a Christmas Revels dance, serves as a well-drawn example of how Tom’s exuberance has a dangerous edge; so, too, do some of his worrying musings: “More and more his thoughts seemed to wander to the borderline, the edge of the beyond. What was out there?” His loved ones’ uncertainty about him, and his intentions, becomes a fitting element of this cross-cutting story, which effectively examines the wide-ranging impact of individual actions.

In this eclectic familial history and memoir, Sherwin Gluck offers another installment of his ongoing series. Two previous published books—Private Good Luck (2019) and Pappus: The Saga of a Jewish Family (2021) —were penned by Sherwin, who serves as the editor of this collection of memoiristic vignettes and miscellaneous writings by his aunt, Maria Gluck. The first section offers Maria’s reflections on growing up in a small village in Czechoslovakia in the early 20th century, written prior to her death in 2013. She intended it for her youngest brother, who didn’t remember much from his early childhood overseas, and it traces more than 100 years of family history. Maria recalls, for instance, the differences between her mother’s and father’s extended families; although both were Jewish and followed kosher practices, her father’s family were prosperous business owners, while her mother’s came from more humble origins and were more conservative religiously. The book provides a unique lens into Jewish life in Europe prior to World War II, and later, it harrowingly tells how Maria and her siblings narrowly escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to Columbus, Ohio, in 1940; almost the entirety of their family who remained in Europe were killed by the Nazi regime. Maria’s memoir is fewer than 200 pages in length, followed by more than 450 pages of miscellaneous musings. This eclectic assortment includes additional commentary on her family tree, early writings of an anticipated second book, and even a fictional story that centers on similar themes as the memoir.

Many of these reflections, however, repeat information, making the narrative feel quite repetitive at times. Sherwin, as editor, presents them in a lightly edited format that lends a feeling of authenticity to a work that aims to preserve Maria’s memories for posterity. He prefaces his aunt’s writings with introductions, and provides a good deal of editorial commentary and notes that provide historical context, clarification, and translations of Hebrew and Yiddish terminology: “I came from a very balabuste family [well cared for, religious, and close-knit family], well known and respected,” reads a representative passage from the first page of her remembrance. Sherwin allows Maria to tell her story in her own words, including accounts of controversial disputes with family members; many readers won’t share all of her views, such as her opposition to gay marriage. He reflects on his personal memories of Maria, as well, who never had children of her own; for example, he presents the eulogy he delivered at her funeral, which includes an anecdote about visiting her apartment in Queens, New York. Originally written using IBM’s ViaVoice software when Maria was in her 90s, the book’s conversational style presents a narrative that’s full of fascinating detail, despite occasional stream-of-consciousness tangents. Sherwin’s editorial commentary throughout effectively accomplishes its task of adding useful context to her ruminations, where necessary.