BrilliantBrilliant, reminiscent of Lewis Hydes The Gift in its reach and of Timothy Egans The Worst Hard Time in its haunting evocation of human lives, offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human historyfrom the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. Brox plumbs the class implications of lightwho had it, who didntthrough the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking

For the first time in our history

that the moment was past—just as I would look up from a book I was reading on a Saturday in summer and realize when I saw the clock that the last decent train to the beach had left already

Paul Wood thought he had lost everything

The Art of Starving

Though his letters have been lost to time

Though the second crime had a witness

Often credited as a genuine polymath Bruce

yet powerless to change what she is

each of the parts wrapped and doused in gasoline

editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston area writers past and present

as well as Nelson’s own Voluntary Slavery

After living apart for the last six months