Late American Bloomer

Elizabeth Harrower’s The Watch Tower is a balance of intense character studies and a window into a rapidly changing world. Set before, during and after World War II in Sydney, Australia, The Watch Tower begins when sisters Clare and Laura Vaizey are forced to leave boarding school because their father has died. Clare is only nine, but Laura is in her late teens and gets a job in a cardboard box factory. Soon after, their detached mother announces she’s returning to her native England. Fearing poverty, Laura winds up marrying her boss, Felix Shaw, more than 20 years ...

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Waiting for a Non-Twitchy Life

To say that the many parts of Josh Hanagarne are divergent is an understatement. Hanagarne is a lapsed Mormon, a bona-fide bookworm and librarian at the Salt Lake City Public Library, a 6’7 strongman (who experiments with kettlebells and railroad tie bending) and has Tourette Syndrome. Fortunately, Hanagarne also possesses a disarming and goofy sense of humor. In his memoir, The World’s Strongest Librarian, he refers to his Tourette’s as Misty (short for Miss Tourette’s). His guiding maxim, repeated throughout the memoir, is the succinct and sincere, “Don’t be a dick.”

The World’s Strongest ...

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A Place for Everybody

When we think of the circus in America, we tend to conjure the image of the big top, rising red and white in a field on the edge of town. We taste stale peanuts and the sticky floss of cotton candy; and even if we’ve never heard it in person, we imagine the crack of the ringmaster’s whip.

Before he began an academic and experiential study of the circus, this is how Duncan Wall envisioned the circus, too. Wall’s book, The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present, begins like ...

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