George E. Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. $27.95. 480 pp.

Vaillant’s life work since 1966, this study began following a group of 268 men from their undergraduate days at Harvard. Those who remain are now in their 90s. The long-term purpose of the study has been to determine the nature of their satisfactions and dissatisfactions with life, sustained intimacy important for the former and abuse of alcohol significant for the latter.

Owen Whooley, Knowledge in the Time of Cholera: The Struggle over American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. $30.00. 307 pp.

Whooley, assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, has made an essential contribution to understanding the nature of medical knowledge and its application to disease, in particular, the response to cholera outbreaks throughout the nineteenth century. He grasps both resistance and accommodation to changing frameworks of understanding disease as the science of modern medicine emerged.

David A. Hollinger, After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. $29.95. 228 pp..

In this collection of his most important and salient writings on ecumenical Protestantism, Hollinger, professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, assesses the impact of liberal Protestant thinking and action on American life and culture. In its confrontation with modernity, Protestantism has moved in various directions. Hollinger addresses one direction less followed these days.

Max Boot, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Liveright, 2013. $35.00. 784 pp.

The military historian, Max Boot, offers a sweeping overview of nontraditional warfare, putting to rest the assumptions that such warfare represents the minority tradition in armed conflict. Guerilla warfare has been used strategically throughout history, and as is well understood by now, right up to the present moment.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. $16.95. 560 pp.

Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz’s book has been described as “the single most comprehensive counterargument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories.” Stiglitz explains how inequality affects and is affected by every aspect of national policy, and he offers a vision for a more just and prosperous future, supported by a concrete program to achieve that vision.