With his rigorous, comprehensive new guidebook, mycologist Paul Stamets promises psilocybin mushrooms will “forever be your fungal allies.” ... Read full Story
Royal dynasties, niche cultural histories, data science and long-put off classics: Here’s what BookPage staffers are reading off the clock to make the most of the season. ... Read full Story
The Great American Retro Road Trip is a clever, offbeat, encyclopedic travelogue that celebrates roadside attractions from the kooky to the classic, and everything in between. ... Read full Story
Susan E. Clark’s illustrated, pocket-sized guide to clouds both explains meteorological science and marvels at the poetry of the sky. ... Read full Story
In Claire Jia’s incisive and witty debut, former best friends Lian and Wenyu are reunited when Wenyu returns to Beijing for her engagement party, setting the two down a reckless path. ... Read full Story
In the quietly enchanting The Place of Tides, James Rebanks spends a season with the “duck women” of a Norwegian archipelago and reminds us that small acts of care for our environment can result in great things when done over time. ... Read full Story
Both hopeful and determinedly honest, Leila Mottley’s The Girls Who Grew Big follows three Floridian teenage mothers, and reflects on how and why we love. ... Read full Story
Rachel Joyce wields her descriptions and impressions like an artist wields paint in this portrait of how four adult children become unmoored in the wake of their father’s death. ... Read full Story
Take a trip to the beach, watch fireworks, visit the public pool: There are countless ways to spend these long hot days, and these books cover a few of the possibilities. ... Read full Story
Dragonfly migrations, bioluminescent plankton and “hardcore mammal spotters”: In his refreshing, playful Nature at Night, naturalist Charles Hood shows that nighttime is almost like an undiscovered country. ... Read full Story
“A state environmental oversight board voted unanimously to rescind a controversial proposal that would have permitted California municipal landfills to accept contaminated soil that is currently required to be dumped at sites specifically designated and approved for hazardous waste.” — Tony Briscoe, The Los Angeles Times, 16 May 2025
Did you know?
Rescind and the lesser-known words exscind and prescind all come from the Latin verb scindere, which means “to split, cleave, separate.” Rescind was adapted from its Latin predecessor rescindere in the 16th century, and prescind (from praescindere) and exscind (from exscindere) followed in the next century. Exscind means “to cut off” or “to excise,” and prescind means “to withdraw one’s attention,” but of the three borrowings, only rescind established itself as a common English term. Today, rescind is most often heard in contexts having to do with the withdrawal of an offer, award, or privilege, or with invalidation of a law or policy.