To belong - there are few stronger human urges, beyond the basic life-sustaining ones that drive our thoughts, words, and actions. Gabriel Harkin, growing up Catholic in a bitterly divided Northern Ireland, quickly discovers that a sense of acceptance and belonging is a weighty political matter as well as a particularly elusive goal.

Gabriel is in a bit of a jam. Already part of the "oppressed minority" community of Catholics, his outsider status defines his every experience. He is taunted and bullied at school for acting differently; he fears the disapproval of his parents; he is abused by authority figures and his peers; and his religion dictates that his budding homosexual feelings are sinful, wrong, and not to be discussed under any circumstances. For a confused child to be stifled and silenced at every turn would be nothing short of maddening. For Damian McNicholl, it is excellent fodder for a novel.

McNicholl unflinchingly delves into the mind of a child becoming a young man and experiencing all of puberty's  confusions, anxieties, triumphs, and disasters. Gabriel's revulsion at his own thoughts, and the relative silence or blatant rudeness with which he is treated, elevate his search well beyond the level of simple teenage angst. His growing awareness of the hypocrisies of authority figures spreads from disappointment with immediate family and friends to a condemnation of politicians, religious figures, and educators, who all seem to fail this young man at the times he most needs help.

McNicholl captures the language and cadence of the Northern Irish as only a native can. Luckily, he has also kindly spared his American audience some of the more inaccessible elements of Irish speech. Although McNicholl's explanations (especially on the Northern Irish political situation) can be cumbersome, he manages to capture a culture that will be unfamiliar to many readers.
The book reads like a thinly veiled memoir. The obvious need McNicholl has to tell his story, and the strongly felt emotions that propel it forward, keep the reader engaged and entertained. There are few surprises here, but the skillful depiction of an unfamiliar culture and the powerful feelings of the main character make A Son Called Gabriel poignant, touching, and thoroughly readable.

- Annie Kane-Horrigan

I am in the process of selling my house and 16 acres in the northern Catskills and buying a much smaller house in Columbia County - in essence, handing over stewardship of one parcel of land and accepting stewardship of another.

I didn't think of the transfer in those terms until reading Voices of the Land, a collection of photographs and essays commissioned by the Dutchess Land Conservancy (who receive the royalties). The book consists of 37 black and white photographs by Rensselaerville photographer Charles Lindsay and 18 essays, written by people (some professional writers, some not) who are passionate about the land and about the different types of attachments and relationships we humans form, and sometimes destroy, when we move to the country.

In his foreword, Michael Pollan calls the book a "gift of welcome" and wishes someone had given him something like it when he first arrived in the country and proceeded to heedlessly hack away at his land, felling heirloom apple trees to make way for a vegetable garden and dismantling stone walls to make a patio. The essays that follow present pleas - to not hack, to be mindful of the land and its creatures, to remember that it has a history and a purpose and a life beyond us. An architect takes us to a pre-dawn concert performed by birds and frogs; a silversmith takes us deep into the forest in search of mushrooms; an ecologist suggests using nature's own landscaping rather than disturbing the land and possibly some rare and fragile forms of life.

It is in the photographs, however, that the voices are most eloquent. The land and the animals address us on an emotional level, and the result is not only beautiful, but also deeply moving. Lindsay's photographs are about relationships, as well: Of the land to weather (Black Dome under storm clouds, birch catkins in snow); of animals to the land (a Holstein between barbed wire and a telephone pole), to each other (blackbird nestlings squawking for food), and, in a fisher's clear gaze directly into the camera, to us.
I don't know whether the pleas in Voices of the Land will ever be heard by the kind of people who drive up on weekends in their Hummers and clear-cut hilltops for their McMansions, but I do think it can affect the choices of those who listen. I plan to leave a copy of it, along with a vase of flowers from the hundred-year-old lilacs, for the buyers of my house, with the hope that they will hear what the voices have to say.

- Rebecca Stowe

World-renowned physicist and author Fritjof Capra has been at the forefront of the sustainability movement since its very earliest days. Founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, he won acclaim for his investigations into complexity theory. The Tao of Physics, a 1970s classic, ties Eastern spirituality with Western physics, demonstrates the obsolescence of mechanistic thinking, and argues for a new worldview.

Capra's latest books, both titled The Hidden Connections, break yet more barriers. The first volume is divided into two sections. Part One provides a user-friendly overview of the development of social theory and scientific inquiry and an easy-to-understand introduction to systems theory and its impact on the search for truth. In Part Two, Capra explores the possible benefits of applying complexity theory to large-scale social interaction - specifically, corporations and organizations, global capitalism, and biotechnology. Integrating ends with a passionate plea to alter both consciousness and what Capra calls the "global criminal economy" that "has threatened and destroyed local communities around the world" by "attempting to turn diversity into monoculture, ecology into engineering, and life itself into a commodity."

If Integrating can be likened to a textbook on the subject of complexity and systems theory, Capra's most recent book, subtitled "A Science for Sustainable Living," can be seen as its workbook. In it, he lays out a framework for using these theories to solve contemporary problems. In order to sustain life, says Capra, the principles that guide the formation and running of all of our social institutions must be in synch with the organization of nature.  Capra's plan for abandoning the idea of a global economy in favor of creating ecologically sustainable communities and technologies is both provocative and compelling.

- Susan Piperato

Fans of poets as disparate as Mary Jo Salter and Federico Garcia Lorca will be attracted to this new collection of poems, the emphasis of which is on the body, the lifeblood that stirs in each vein, the odor of knuckles, the very action of breath, and the body as home. "Family" is the reliquary that is opened in front of the reader, but instead of ashes and cold remains, we view life, colorful life, being lived and remembered. Celia Bland, a Hudson Valley writer and the Director of College Writing at Bard, keeps the reader always aware of the coursing of blood and the places it spills, and seeps, from us.

The center pole of Bland's first collection of poetry, Soft Box, is her poem "Wisdom Teeth: A tooth is a house taken root." This poem in two parts is the tie between child and mother, daughter and wife, and the places of home, safety, and danger in the life of a family: "A tipi is a woman's skirt over hoops, anchored /to the earth. Move respectfully / between her many legs; bank the evening's fire / and close her smoke flaps against the dew."

The danger in reading first-person poetry is to assume that the "I" is the voice of the poet, and to ascribe the emotion, thought, and character to the poet herself. In Bland's poems, though, the voice is one of authenticity; Bland uses such unique language that the reader is compelled to turn again to the back cover to see who this woman is. Her imagery is concrete and sometimes ruthless. In "Wisdom Teeth," the vision of a childhood home being torn down refers to the previous poem, "The Stepfather Raises the Tipi," and uses the reader's own knowledge to create the transition from one section to the next; both make difficult but rewarding demands on the reader's sympathy.

Bland's linguistic strategies are inventive: at once delightful, erotic, and serious. In her poems about the births of her children, the tone is intimate, evocative of time and place. Intelligence, while not "on display" as in the poetry of many academics, is woven throughout, especially in the relationship between speaker and reader, and frequently uses humor to make its point.
It is always wonderful to discover a "new poet" for oneself, and to share the discovery with others only increases the delight. Read this collection. You won't be disappointed.

- Nancy Rullo