A Sheepdog Named Oscar: Love and Companionship in Rural Ireland

The Barnes & Noble Nonfiction Pick for September 2025

New York Times Bestseller
Top Ten Debut in Non-fiction paperback

“A beautiful, vulnerable, polymathic book that traverses art and animal; the rescue and recovery of Oscar and author; and the belonging of each to the other in their own particular way.”
—Jack Anderson, Irish Examiner

“Set against the landscapes of west Limerick and east Clare, through local walking trails and moments of quiet reflection, Waldron shares a moving account of loss and recovery that resonates with emotional honesty.”—Limerick Leader

Oscar is no ordinary dog, an enigmatic border collie rescued from a derelict farm. A working sheepdog by nature, his instincts pull him to charge ahead—yet always return. Author and film scholar Dara Waldron, grieving the sudden loss of his father, attempts to make a pet of Oscar, embarking with him on daily walks through misty woodlands and along rugged hillsides. As their bond deepens, each step through the Irish countryside becomes part of a ritual of recovery, trust, and understanding.

For readers of Jon Katz, Helen Macdonald, and nature-infused memoirs, A Sheepdog Named Oscar is a poignant reminder that sometimes the path to healing begins with a four-legged guide.

“Every resistance movement had its forgers,​ but few have told their tales. Sarah​ ​Kaminsky’s affectionate rendering is a book not just about a remarkable craftsman,​ ​but a man who strove to save “every life​ ​that​ ​was​ ​in danger​.​”
– Times Literary Supplement

“[An] in-depth study of Kaminsky’s second career comes with Deborah Dash Moore’s new essay [that…] examines Kaminsky’s photographs of the 1940’s and ’50s. It’s a fine appreciation fo their quiet, moody, evocative appeal and a superb rounding out of this new edition.”
—Manuscripts Society

“A masterclass in the art of being human.” —ArabLit

““One of the most urgent and moving works to emerge from the last decade…. a collective archive, one that bears witness to the lives, voices, and struggles of countless Syrians, whose stories often vanish in the noise and politics of war. Translation here becomes an act of solidarity, ensuring that these words travel and ignite new readers across languages and borders.”
—Ibrahim Fawzy, New Books Network podcast

Watch Hadi’s war reporting from Aleppo in this New York Times 2016 documentary: “Dying to Be Heard: Reporting Syria’s War” and 60 Minutes “Fighting for Life in Syria’s Vicious Civil War” about The White Helmets, with Scott Pelley interviewing Hadi after an assassination attempt. Listen to his interview on This American Life‘s episode “Wartime Radio.”

“Unlike other [non-Ukrainian] writers, Velikonja has directly experienced twenty rockets detonating in a city of millions. … An anti-war book, which treats people in wartime with the utmost seriousness, refusing to reduce them to mere statistics.” —Slovenian Daily DNEVNIK

“Presents us with a series of examples of the horrors of war and the optimism to resist … written in a hybrid genre, somewhere between a travelog, essay, diary, and barefoot culturology.” —Croatian Weekly NOVOSTI

“Amir Zaki makes stately, often elegant photographs that subtly undermine perceptions of coherence and stability in architecture. […] His relentlessly inquisitive spirit uncovers the peculiar, the precarious, the buoyant and the beautiful in the structures we tend to pass with little thought.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Like Mekas, who knew how to give the small and personal a universal charge, Delpeut also applies the stylistic device of alternating between individual and abstract reflections. It is simultaneously a finished piece and the beginning (or continuation) of a conversation.”
—Dutch Review of Books

“Remarks on Color is a luminous tapestry of prose poetry that invites readers to embark on a chromatic odyssey., Wood’s stunning synthesis of familiar reality and surreal exaggeration illuminates the complex relationships, emotions and cultural associations we share with these spectral entities. As the amused reader considers the significance of each color in their own personal spectrum, Wood serves up a feast and critique of the colorful world in which we live.”
—Tyler Stallings

Book Trailer: Erick Meyenberg and Ruth Estévez

I Am Oum Ry: A Champion Kickboxer’s Story of Surviving the Cambodian Genocide and Discovering Peace

“The story of the legendary martial arts fighter and kickboxer Oum Ry is by turns pulse-pounding, disturbing, and powerful. His is an astonishing life told beautifully by his daughter Zochada Tat and Addi Somekh. The book will grip you from its first pages and not let you go.”
—Jeff Chang, author of Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Letters Apart reading by Ed Schad and interview with Liat Yossifor

“In razor-sharp anecdotes, some a paragraph, some several pages, Claire writes in the present tense. The result is altogether Loosian: timeless, with as little ornament, but as much empathy, as any protégé could deliver. Here, theory in the flesh walks in.”
—Barbara Lamprecht, coauthor of Neutra: Complete Works

“Thoroughly researched, objectively written, her book on the Groag couple is of serious interest to any student of 20th century modernist architecture and design and should, and will, be part of every academic or museum art historical library.”
—Paul Wijdeveld, author of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Architect

“Not just about one survivor but a meaningful observation of an even more significant story about the bloody outcomes of extremism.”
—New York Journal of Books

“As lush with speculative literary history as it is with lyrical prose,
picking its way through the sticky webs of family dynamics and revolutionary politics.”
—World Literature Today

Bookmarks Reviews

“You’ll be hooked as I was if you pick up this serious yet humor-filled examination of a [conceptual artist’s] life too well examined.”
—Literary Hub