Lemuria Bookstore Blog

I found myself with two books about Catherine the Great and was thrilled to have them because I didn’t know very much (besides the obvious) about her.  I always find it very interesting when different types of books come out on similar subjects. The first book which is available for purchase now (and flying off [...]

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Richard Dortch, an avid reader of Tony Horwitz, contributes this review of his latest book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. The Civil War didn’t start with the firing on Fort Sumter, said the great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It started with John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. [...]

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When Preston Lauterbach set out to write The Chitlin’ Circuit I’m sure he never intended for it to be a “secret history” of Mississippi, but that’s what it feels like to me. As the dust jacket marketing says, The Chitlin’ Circuit is “The first history of the network of black nightclubs that created Rock ‘N’ [...]

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It wasn’t the language that impressed me as the most foreign thing about Paris, though knowing a bit of French from school helped with that; for many Americans it is the architecture, its decadence and age. A few years ago, my dad took me and my sisters to Paris. We were there only a few [...]

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Erik Larson is back again but this time it is 1933, Hitler is rising to power and William E. Dodd has been assigned to Berlin as the United States Ambassador to Germany. Dodd is a frugal professor from Chicago and brings his wife, son and daughter, Martha, along with him to have the opportunity of [...]

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Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz Bantam (2009) Thirty-four years ago I opened Lemuria to offer books for sale that were at the time not offered in my community. I felt the need to reflect the life-style of the counter-culture movement through my inventory with a lot [...]

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Because I recently graduated from the Art History program at Savannah College of Art and Design, The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr was recommended to me.  I was immediately intrigued.  The book follows the investigation of one of the many missing Caravaggio paintings, The Taking of Christ. Harr recounts the work of three people who [...]

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This is a fascinating book about Isabella de Medici and her life as the daughter of Duke Cosimo, 1 —one of intellectual and romantic freedom as long as her father was alive. Given in marriage to Paolo Orsini, she completely ignored her husband living apart from him, refusing to leave Florence, and eventually taking a [...]

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What Is The What by Dave Eggers The last two weeks I’ve spent reading this book have been nothing short of eye-opening. What is the What is by far one of the most memorable reads I have had in quite some time. Eggers tells the story of Valentino Achack Deng, beginning with his current living [...]

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