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This dual biography of Helen Keller and magnetic writer and Boston Transcript editor Ed Chamberlin was written by the journalist’s great-great granddaughter and explores their four decades of friendship, tracing Keller’s growing interest in social activism, disability and women’s rights, and pacifism.

In Boston’s adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. Andy Puopolo, raised in the city’s North End, was murdered in a 1976 stabbing. Starting with this brutal murder, The Combat Zone tells the story of the Puopolo family’s struggle with both a devastating loss and a criminal justice system that produced two trials with opposing verdicts, all within the context of a racially divided Boston.

Andrews explores Emerson’s writings, including his journals and letters, and makes them accessible to today’s spiritual seekers. Written in everyday language and based on scholarship grounded in historical detail, this enlightening book considers the nineteenth-century religious and intellectual crosscurrents that shaped Emerson’s worldview to reveal how his spiritual teachings remain timeless and modern, universal and uniquely American.