1. Talmage Boston’s review of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham. “Anyone who succeeds in condensing and deriving lessons from the guts of American history in fewer than 300 pages is demonstrating synthesizing powers bordering on the supernatural. Such is the achievement [here].”


2. “#Cockygate” by Meg Opperman. In her monthly “Write Side Up,” columnist Opperman railed against the absurdity of trademarking the English language, which one romance author — in a widely publicized case involving Amazon — is attempting to do. Hubris, anyone?


3. Poetry Exemplars by Grace Cavalieri. Month after damn month/Grace dominates our top five/fellow scribes shake heads. #Haiku


4. Thomas Kühne’s review of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz by Omer Bartov. “The most destructive period in the history of Buczacz, which occurred between the First and Second World Wars, is the focus of this meticulous study. As Bartov shows, the rise of national ideologies and obsession with ethnic identity were not the only forces that caused the destructive dynamic.”


5. “#OwnVoices” by E.A. Aymar. This installment of “Decisions & Revisions” — which chronicles a movement by writers of color “meant to define marginalized characters written by marginalized writers” — was written in February but ignited readers’ passions in May.

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