When Healing Harms: The Doctor Who Put a Hospital on Trial — and the Case that Shook Psychiatry by Eric Caplan (University of California Press). Reviewed by Sara Polsky. “Caplan takes readers through the behind-the-scenes drama of Osheroff’s time at Chestnut Lodge, as his partner and friend Bob Greenspan launched an unexpected attempt to take over Osheroff’s dialysis practice and his parents fought to get him better care. Eventually, he left Chestnut Lodge for another facility, Silver Hill, where doctors had a different approach to treatment and were ‘acutely aware that [patients] had a life beyond the hospital’ that they needed to resume. Once Osheroff began taking medication at Silver Hill, his symptoms improved.”

Partita: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper). Reviewed by Ryan Davison. “The novel first traps our attention as a romantic, coming-of-age adventure; soon turns shockingly traumatic; then morphs into a gripping family drama; and finally erupts with revelations around deeply concealed secrets. Sections slide back and forth between the younger and older Livia, the transitions wonderfully smooth and effective. While cleaning out the overstuffed house of her recently deceased mother, she uncovers long-hidden secrets about herself and the death of her brother. These discoveries serve as flash points to the later story, and the final act detonates with the same ferocity of the beginning and middle.”

It Could Be Otherwise: Science in the Age of Uncertainty by Stuart Firestein (Basic Books). Reviewed by Raima Larter. “The book is a wide-ranging exploration of topics covering the history of science, from the origin of the term scientist (an amalgamation of ‘artist’ and ‘science’) to developments in the newer science of complex systems. Firestein offers several new ways of thinking about the scientific method, which he suggests is widely misunderstood. As a scientist myself, I can confirm that his five cognitive tools, or ‘cogs,’ as he calls them, are pretty much the way science is (and always has been) done.”

The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation by Michael Blanding (PublicAffairs). Reviewed by Jennifer Bort Yacovissi. “Thus enters David Marvin Green, born in 1941 to Walter Green, a receiver of holy visions starting at age 24, and Marie Lark, once pastor of the Emporia, Kansas, branch of the Church of God of Prophecy (good on CGP for being enlightened enough to allow women preachers back in the day). David was one of six siblings who traveled across the Southwest with their parents as Dad opened new churches to meet the Pentecostal demand. The family was an early adopter of the prosperity gospel, believing that God rewards true believers with material benefits. They also believed that all giving must go to the church in support of spreading the Word, not to any other possibly worthy cause (such as, say, feeding the hungry).”

A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw by Kevin M. Levin (University of North Carolina Press). Reviewed by Fergus M. Bordewich. “Levin suggests that Shaw’s leadership of the 54th Massachusetts derived less from a deep-rooted affinity for African Americans than from a driving ambition for higher rank and a desire to distinguish himself in battle. (Massachusetts governor John Andrew, a close friend of the family, had insisted on a commander with an antislavery background for the state’s first Black regiment.) It nevertheless took considerable moral courage for Shaw to accept the appointment, since white officers who took service in Black regiments were subject to shaming and insults from racists in the military. Once in command, Shaw proved deeply loyal to his men, forgoing his own salary until Black troops received pay equal to that of whites. (Parity would come only after his death.)”

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