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November 2025
Posted 11.20.25: The $50,000 American Battlefield Trust Prize for History has been awarded to historian Alan Pell Crawford for This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South, a timely work that humanizes stories amid that conflict's 250th anniversary. The Prize is made annually to a work of military history or biography that underscores the essential role of the nation's military conflicts on the founding, formation, and perpetuation of our nation, which we continue to learn from today.
April 2025
Posted 04.01.25: “Crase constructs his biography from their field journals, letters, and a suitcase of Ripley's drawings left to him and his partner. Erudite and nimble, Crase presents us these two characters, or rather, allows them to present themselves as he saw them, an enduring love and lifetimes of experience.... It is a profound and loving tribute to curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge.”—James Whitmore on Both: A Portrait in Two Parts by Douglas Crase in The Library Is Open
March 2025
Posted 03.17.25: Kirkus Reviews on Carpet Diem: Tales from the World of Oriental Rugs by George Bradley: “An unexpectedly engrossing account of a decades-long preoccupation with carpets, their history and lore, and his interactions with kindred connoisseurs, dealers, restorers, and disreputable players in the trade.... Bradley's personal journey of discovery, learning, bargaining, acquisition, and lamentation, which began in 2003, is fascinating. Even those not immediately drawn to the subject will find his weave hard to resist.... Carpet Diem is an education. Bradley's take on the strategies of bargaining is particularly enjoyable.... Bradley's prose is crisp, fresh as a new loaf of bread, and not without a certain elegance of description. He can paint vivid word pictures, especially of New England and Asia. Bradley augments his book with engaging asides, a detailed appendix, a glossary of terms, a bibliography, and 11 full-color photographs. The allure of artisanal rugs is afforded the treatment it deserves.”