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May 5th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 5/5

On this week’s Front Table, journey along ancient India’s forgotten highways of influence, and meet lost souls seeking connection in sharp, haunting stories. Rethink ancestry and belonging through the tangled genetics of the Levant, and discover unexpected friendship between a grieving woman and a wise octopus. Witness a century of betrayal and resilience in the Middle East, navigate parallel worlds of desire and regret, and enter the haunted nightmares of a nation under dictatorship. 
 

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
(Bloomsbury Publishing)...

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April 28th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 4/28

On this week’s Front Table, explore the power of muscle and movement, a mother’s fight for herself and her son, and a radical rethinking of truth in democracy. Celebrate global storytelling through translation, reimagine mothering as social change, revisit a piercing family portrait in poetry, and trace the long history of wealth and inequality. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 
 

On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
(Algonquin Books)
Bonnie Tsui

In On Muscle, Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal...

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April 28th, 2025
Meet our friend, John

"We were thought of as providing a great service, and people appreciated that very much. As long as the Co-op can continue to be of such service to the academic community, general readers, and the youngest budding readers--at 57th Street Books, it may well survive."

Meet our friend, John Modschiedler
Former manager of the Seminary Co-op from 1967-1970.

Born in Texas, John grew up in the city of New Orleans and attended Elmhurst University. After graduating, John found himself in Chicago and frequented the newly opened Seminary Co-op bookstore regularly. The bookstore, started in 1961 by UChicago students as a way to procure their texts more affordably, had humble beginnings on the inside of those students' desk drawers. Championed by the Dean of Students enthusiasm, the students were able to create the Seminary...

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April 21st, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 4/21

On this week’s Front Table, explore endangered speech in a sweeping account of vanishing languages and the lives they carry. Reenter the Scottish Highlands through a nature writing that reveals a mountain's soul and a seeker’s solitude. Discover poetry like silver—resonant, unflinching, and radiantly strange. Witness four decades of the bold art of painter Tom Torluemke. Reimagine Left ideologies in a provocative call for deeper self-examination and new possibilities. Wander with an heir through the collapsing civilization. And follow a gifted musician confronting generational pain and hard-won love in a moving portrait of reconciliation. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

Rare Tongues: The Secret...

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April 12th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 4/14
 
On this week’s Front Table, consider how a remarkable community of Black women writers transformed American writing and cultural institutions, then dive into a thrilling new novel that examines an artist spectacularly self-destructing. Be captivated by two stories that converge in the aftermath of the devastating 1908 earthquake in Sicily and Calabria where each character must piece back together a life and start anew, and ponder poems that speak to an author's profound experience of learning to write again after suffering a stroke. Then ask, do any of us really care about truth when it comes to politics? And should we? Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.
 

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April 3rd, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 4/7
 
On this week’s Front Table, explore birdwatching activism, a satirical look at modern life, and a personal journey through chronic pain. Dive into a family drama in startup culture, a redefined vision of love in Judaism, and a haunting tale from a forgotten town. Finally, rethink authority in today’s intellectual landscape. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

 

 

Birding to Change the World
(Ecco Press)
Trish O'Kane

In Birding to Change the World, O'Kane details the astonishing science of bird life...

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March 31st, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 3/31

On this week’s Front Table, unravel the consequences of climate migration in the U.S., explore American life through a Southern Gothic prism, and uncover a new approach to the book of Genesis. Journey through a poet's search for meaning and an essay collection with a passion for dialogue and dissent. Witness the far right coming to life from the darkest corners of the internet and consider humanity's varying reactions to the moon turning into cheese. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

 

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March 24th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 3/24

On this week’s Front Table, uncover a luminous speculative tale of family and humanity in a reunified Korea, rethink scarcity with a bold vision for abundance, and unravel the shapeshifting life of a literary enigma. Journey through fantastical cities of memory and desire, explore the evolution of animal play, and step inside the algorithm-driven music industry. Finally, follow two orphaned friends in post-Fukushima Japan as they confront a buried past.
 
Luminous
(Simon & Schuster)
Silvia Park

Luminous weeping speculative debut about three very unusual siblings, two human, one robot, living in a recently re-unified Korea, where sentient, very-nearly-...

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March 16th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 3/17

 On this week’s Front Table, explore a musician’s journey to self-definition, an office worker’s quiet rebellion, and the hidden cost of our distracted age. Trace a family’s legacy through glass and secrecy, witness a woman’s radical escape from convention, and uncover the forces shaping a city in flux. Finally, dive into a lyrical meditation on faith, longing, and the unknown. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
(Grand Central Publishing)
Neko Case

Neko Case, one of music’s most influential artists, brings her...

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March 9th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 3/10

 On this week’s Front Table, discover the history of America's most powerful broadcast network and what it means to be a Jew today. Explore a meditation on Black identity and belonging, poetry from one of Denmark's most celebrated writers, and a vital friendship that led to controversy and questions about race, equity and politics. Finally, uncover a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country and lyrical poetry exploring sensuality, and queer, Black joy. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

The Trouble of Color
(Basic...

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