Norah Esty's 3 favorite reads in 2025

• 2024
• 2025

The first major biography of "the Thomas Edison of guns," John Moses Browning, a visionary inventor who designed the modern handgun and whose astonishing array of firearms armed American troops since before World War I, proved decisive in World War II, and became integral to American culture. 

Few people are aware that John Moses Browning--a tall, modest man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West-- invented the mechanism used in virtually all modern pistols, created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns, and conceived the machine guns introduced in World War I and which dominated… show more.

A fascinating look into how the transformative joys of mathematical experience are available to everyone, not just specialists

Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from Rene Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case. Like Albert Einstein, who famously claimed to have "no special talent," they said that they had accomplished what they did using ordinary human doubts, weaknesses, curiosity, and imagination.

David Bessis guides us on an illuminating path toward… show more.

Ann Baer has produced a sensitive, knowledgeable month-by-month account of the hardships suffered by Marion and Peter Carpenter, set from March through the following February of one year of their struggle for existence in Medieval England. . . . Ann Baer has given the world an immeasurable gift with the writing of Down the Common. Her attention to detail paints a crystal clear picture of the pain, the beauty of nature, and the steadfastness of people to whom each day was unceasing toil.-The Midwest Book Review.