by Louis Bayard
With wit and charm that only Louis Bayard (Roosevelt's Beast) can deliver, Courting Mr. Lincoln transports readers to 19th-century Springfield, Ill., to view both the romance of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd and the intimate friendship of the future president and a dry-goods merchant named Joshua Speed.
Elizabeth Todd Edwards is determined to find her sister Mary Todd a husband, so she summons Mary to Illinois from their childhood home in Lexington, Ky. Daughters of a wealthy banker, both women are educated
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by Oliver Sacks
The late neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks (Awakenings; The River of Consciousness) crafted a series of essays as varied as they are wise in Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales. At their core is a section devoted to "clinical tales" in which Sacks discusses freely, and always with a deep sense of humanity, several patients and their neurological disorders that fascinated him. In "Seeing God in the Third Millennium," Sacks explores out-of-body and near-death experiences,
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by Mordicai Gerstein
Oh, that Hermes: we always knew he was mischievous. But in I Am Hermes!, Mordicai Gerstein's comics-style autobiography of sorts, it's clear that as a kid, the messenger of the gods was a pest of Olympian proportions.
With the help of dialogue balloons, Hermes narrates his own adventures, starting with events from his devilish infancy and toddlerhood. The baby-talking trickster takes delight in sneaking out of his cradle and stealing the cows belonging to his older brother Apollo. When Apollo rats out the
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