Category: Book Reviews
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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July 10, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Xiaolu Guo’s novel Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines Moby Dick. The adventure begins when a fifteen year old girl, Ishmaelle, becomes an orphan. Born and raised in the poor village of Saxonham, a fictional coastal village in the UK, she tries to work as a ropemaker for a time but is quickly drawn to a life at sea.
» Read more about: BOOK REVIEW: Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo »
May 1, 2026
Thanks to Chinyere Okoh, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
Beyond the Silence
by Chinyere Okoh
I find myself alone in a still room,
where shadows seem to stretch and exhale with me.
The quiet carries a single, fragile question that lingers in the air:
Where am I?
The voice feels both distant and familiar,
as though it belongs to me and yet echoes from somewhere beyond. » Read more about: Rebuilding Connections: Book Review of Together by Vivek H. Murthy, MD »
April 17, 2026
Thanks to Natalie Sum Yue Chung, HMU 2026 Fellow in Ideas; PhD Candidate in Climate Policy, Princeton University
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) by Henry David Thoreau: review by Natalie Sum Yue Chung
There are books we read, and then there are books that read us—that somehow knew us before we knew ourselves. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” (1854) has been such a companion throughout my life.
» Read more about: Finding Walden: A Personal Reflection on Thoreau’s Masterwork »
April 3, 2026
Thanks to Barbara Drobot, a 2026 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
As someone who works both in the classroom as a teacher and in the studio as an artist, I often return to a fundamental question: is creativity an exceptional gift reserved for a talented few, or a human capacity that can be cultivated? In The Courage to Create (1975), Rollo May approaches this question through an existential perspective and argues that creativity emerges from the courage to confront uncertainty.
» Read more about: BOOK REVIEW: The Courage to Create by Rollo May »
October 24, 2025
Thanks to Sabahat Ali Wani, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
In 1971, Linda Nochlin asked, “Why have there been no great women artists?” Triggering a series of conversations, debates, and gendered concerns around art history, this question still holds classical relevance, but also reveals Eurocentric ideals and practices of celebrated feminist art historical interventions, where non-Western women artists and their artworks are “doubly marginalised,” in fact,
» Read more about: Tracing the Ebbs and Flows of Feminism and Art History Now »
July 18, 2025
Thanks to Ibrahim Nureni, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
The debate of what constitutes judgment, its role, and its significance in literary criticism is not theoretically innovative; it has been a subject of discourse since the classical, medieval, and renaissance epochs. Scholars like Horace, Longinus, and Sidney emphatically stated the importance of aesthetic values in judgment in Ars Poetica, On the Sublime,
June 6, 2025
Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage is a masterfully crafted narrative that chronicles one of the most extraordinary survival stories in the annals of exploration. Originally published in 1959, the book recounts the ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition led by the indomitable Sir Ernest Shackleton. Lansing, an American journalist, skillfully reconstructs this harrowing saga through meticulous research,
» Read more about: BOOK REVIEW: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing »
August 23, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
This week, I want to highlight another exceptional find from my summer reading list. This is part of a series that I began a few weeks ago and will revisit again.
A few years ago, I wrote about Fortino Sámano, a book of poetry by French poet Virginie Lalucq.
May 10, 2024
Thanks to Jennifer-NeToi Claiborne, a 2024 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s book review.
“To see with the “eyes of our hearts” (Ephesians 1:18) would be the goal of an imaginative journey and training, and the arts provide a perfect vehicle through which we can move past clogged, cluttered self absorption into the reliable communal body to experience the Spirit’s leading.” – Makoto Fujimura
As a poet,
May 3, 2024
Thanks to John M. Wiley, a 2024 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s book review.
We often hear about whether someone is “left-brained” or “right-brained” to distinguish between one’s predisposition to either logical thinking or creativity. Perhaps many (if not most) people tend to favor one side, but the case of Isaac Watts shows a man who excelled in both sides of his brain. Watts was most often known for his work as the “father of English hymnody,” showing his brilliance as a wordsmith with hymns such as “Alas!