Nonfiction

Each year there is one book that hits me in a way I never expect. Rupurt Isaacson’s memoir is one such tale, where we watch a father asking for answers and being led on a journey with unforeseen results. In the beginning of the book, Isaacson candidly describes what it is like to be a parent to his son Rowan—autistic and incapable of communication, tormented by raging fits, requiring 24-hour care—and leaving both his parents exhausted, isolated, and angry. Then, one day, walking with Rowan in the woods near their house, Isaacson stumbled across his neighbor’s horse, Betsy. What happened next was unlike anything Isaacson, an experienced rider, had ever seen. Too quick to be stopped, Rowan ducked under the fence, ran up to the horse, who was at least five times his size, and gleefully started dancing under her hooves. The horse went stock still, watched the child, and then bowed her head in a submissive move. Isaacson was shocked and, without thinking, lifted Rowan onto Betsy’s back. The effect on his son was nothing short of miraculous: Rowan started to speak. Shaken but exhilarated, Rupert proposed that the family make a journey to the ancient homeland of the horse, deep in the wilds of Mongolia, where he’d heard astonishing stories of healing and transformation by shamans known as the “horse people.” So began a journey to the furthest reaches of the planet—a journey that would test their love, challenge their beliefs, and change their lives. This is one book you won’t want to miss. —SMC

Like everything that Waldman writes, this collection is edgy, thought provoking, funny, and worthwhile. Waldman, a mother of four, realized that without knowing it, she and her friends had slipped into the habit of calling themselves “bad mothers.” This declaration came from the fact that their toddlers couldn’t recite the planets in order of their distance to the sun, that play-dates were occasionally forgotten, and that—and this one is the worst of all—at the end of the day, these mothers were tired. Reviewing where we get the ideas of the Good Mother, and comparing these to what’s real, Waldman offers her insight and humor to the complexity of motherhood today, while providing an encouraging word for women to give themselves a break. —SMC

In his provocative book, God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against dogma. With erudition and wit, Hitchens addresses what he claims is one of the most urgent issues of our time, “the malignant force of religion in the world.” Describing his own dangerous encounters with religion and his eventual path to a secular life “based on science and reason,” Hitchens offers the reader a close study of what it means to be both a thinking and a believing person, and questions the ways in which those paradigms coexist. —R.M.