rivate place for girls to doodle and draw, record their daydreams, and store their treasures. There are five envelopes for momentos, and writing prompts to get budding journalists started.

In Food on the Page, the first comprehensive history of American cookbooks, Megan J. Elias chronicles cookbook publishing from the early 1800s to the present day. Examining a wealth of fascinating archival material, Elias explores the role words play in the creation of taste on both a personal and a national level.

Alternating chapters of historical background and literary analysis, this study argues that postbellum series books inspired young women by illustrating the ways in which girls could participate in social change, whether through church societies, benevolent organizations, educational institutions or political groups. By 1900, however, the socialization of series heroines had shifted to the consumer marketplace, where girls could develop personality and taste through their purchases. Both models had benefits: Religious faith and political activism gave young women moral power within their communities; consuming gave them opportunities to indulge individual desires and often to socialize in public without adult oversight. This work adds to the existing scholarship on girls' culture not only by examining the beginnings of series fiction for girls and the models of womanhood it presented but also by tracing the shifting social ideologies of girlhood throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.