August is hot, but also everything is starting to turn brown and die, and the only thing to do under these conditions is stare into the middle distance and sigh at intervals. We’d wager about $7 that if you drew up a little chart showing how many words the average person speaks during each month of the year, August would be rock bottom. It is our most laconic time. In that spirit, we present you with five blissfully short book summaries — a roundup of newish releases by Vermont authors featuring a single representative sentence from, yes, page 32.
The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making & Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb
Garrett Graff, Avid Reader Press, 608 pages. $35.
“I do not recall ever seeing Oppie so stimulated…”
Among his colleagues, “Oppie” was the nickname for J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. This quote, from University of California-Berkeley chemist Glenn Seaborg, recalled the moment Oppenheimer first encountered nuclear fission — “the phenomenon,” Seaborg recounts in a new oral history compiled by Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Garrett Graff, “that would play such an important role in shaping the future course of events in his life.”
In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Graff has assembled — from archived recordings, memoirs, diaries, letters and news reports of the time — a history of one of the most consequential discoveries of the 20th century. The 608-page tome is Graff’s fourth oral history and follows his accounts of the D-Day invasion, 9/11 and COVID-19 in Vermont. The book offers a veritable who’s who of scientific minds, military leaders and Japanese survivors of the atomic devastation and its aftermath. Vivid, fascinating and frighteningly timely.
— Ken Picard
Phantom Border: A Personal Reconnaissance of Contemporary Germany
Kerstin Lange, ibidem Press, 363 pages, $34.
…as my friends and I approached the guard booth, passports in hand, my heart raced.
On November 9, 1989, Kerstin Lange’s friend told her to turn on the TV, because “something big is going on in Berlin.” Throngs of people were crossing the Berlin Wall, even dancing on top of it. A native of West Germany, Lange had moved to the U.S. three years earlier. She had always thought of East Germany as the other Germany, “a blank shape behind the iron curtain,” she writes.
What was once the most fortified border in the world is now a nature preserve and living memorial called the Green Belt. In 2016, Vermont writer and journalist Lange began a multiyear expedition on bicycle and on foot, tracing its route to learn how the former border has shaped the people and the land around it. Her compelling narrative weaves her personal memories of life in a divided country with those of the people she meets in a work Kirkus Reviews calls “an impressively erudite remembrance.”
— Mary Ann Lickteig
Identity Church
K.C. Phipps, Corsair Press, 280 pages. $16.99.
“I just want you to know that’s not how boys are dressing these days.”
Sometimes you just want to give a young protagonist a hug and an invitation to the Pink Pony Club. That’s the case for K., as they refer to themself in their debut memoir, which describes their Appalachian upbringing through anecdotes and memories both heartbreaking and hilarious.
Some stories are surreal. Phipps describes a Christian camp performance that begins with a rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and ends with a boxing match between Satan and Jesus. “We hadn’t known what to expect from the antichrist,” Phipps writes, “but karaoke wasn’t even on the board.” Others veer into Southern gothic territory, as when Phipps describes their insidiously evil grandmother and the rifts she creates within the family.
And Phipps documents their mental health challenges, some of which stem from gender dysphoria, although no one in K.’s hometown seems to recognize that. To watch K. navigate their entwined family, religious and gender identities is painful at times but ultimately joyful. Their warm narrative voice makes you feel like you’d recognize them anywhere — no matter what they’re wearing.
— Alice Dodge
Hunter’s Heart Ridge
Sarah Stewart Taylor, Minotaur Books, 311 pages. $29.
That was everyone who had been on the property at the time Moulton was shot.
In a meta moment halfway through Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Hunter’s Heart Ridge, a character muses, “It’s like a movie, isn’t it? Or an Agatha Christie novel. Everyone snowed in and then the knife showing up.” It is, indeed. A telephone line-downing storm, a hunting lodge of cloistered suspects, and motives galore are but a few of the classic murder-mystery elements used effectively in this second book in the Franklin Warren and Alice Bellows series.
Hartland author Taylor’s atmospheric whodunit, set in 1965 in the fictional town of Bethany, Vt., against a backdrop of escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, conjures enough plot twists and red herrings to keep readers guessing. Secondary storylines develop recurring characters from the first book in the series — or do they hide a murderer?
You don’t have to be familiar with opener Agony Hill to enjoy this sequel, but after reading Hunter’s Heart Ridge, you’ll want to double back to it while you wait for book three.
— Angela Simpson
Decision-Making in the Age of Plastics
Rachael Zoe Miller, Green Can Press, 230 pages. $17.99.
Consider something lower shed and more sustainable than virgin polyester or virgin nylon.
As founder of the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, Rachael Zoe Miller is aware of all the ways plastic makes it into the environment. So she created a pick-your-own-adventure-style guide to reduce pollution in everyday life. Intended to meet people where they are when it comes to sustainable choices, the guide explains how to use — or not use — items based on what won’t shed plastic into the environment. It might even help you save a few bucks.
The self-illustrated 230-pager suggests practical actions to combat the sense of impending doom brought on by recent microplastic studies. A 2019 Yale University study estimated that “humans ingest between 39,000 to 52,000 microplastic particles annually,” a number that doubles when you account for inhalation. Using a question-based framework, Miller helps readers determine what changes they could make in their lives that will have a positive effect on the environment and their health. Maybe it’s worth finding a quality fleece at the thrift store rather than buying a cheap new one?
— Sam Hartnett
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2025.
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