MARINA BELOZERSKAYA's To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology (Norton, August 31) introduces 15th-century Italian merchant Cyriacus of Ancona, who sought to save the ruins of antiquity — while spying on the Turks. RICHARD HOLMES's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon, July 14) examines the 18th-century scientists who made the 19th-century's grand discoveries possible.
K.C. COLE's Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: An Intimate Biography of the Other Oppenheimer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 4) reminds us that Robert Oppenheimer's physicist brother was also brought low by the Red Scare. But he did invent the Exploratorium. JOHN V. FLEMING analyzes The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Caused the Cold War (Norton, August 17). Finally, CRAIG NELSON's Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon (Viking, June 25) replays the moon landing 40 years ago this summer.
Poetry
There's still poetry after the National Poetry Month outpouring in April. Just available, APRIL BERNARD's Romanticism (Norton, June 1) takes a dry-eyed look at the notion that love — or any other emotion — conquers all. LAWRENCE RAAB's The History of Forgetting (Penguin Poets, May 26) talks to us in the vernacular about big issues. KATHA POLLITT gives The Mind-Body Problem (Random, June 9) a contemporary spin. And try Lisa Olstein's Lost Alphabet (Copper Canyon, June 1) — her Radio Crackling, Radio Gone was a razzle dazzler.
To keep yourself in verse throughout the summer, check out dance critic JACK ANDERSON's 10th collection, Getting Lost in the City (Hanging Loose, June 30). Wyoming rancher and Iowa Writers' Workshop professor JAMES GALVIN delivers the lean and pointed As Is (Copper Canyon, July 1), Finally, there's Stupid Hope (Graywolf, August 4), a goodbye work from JASON SHINDER, who died last year. Shinder was founder and director of the YMCA National Writer's Voice program.
