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Recent Reviews
Orlando Whitfield
Mixed The Wall Street Journal In his telling, Mr. Whitfield takes such great pains to present himself as a complete innocent that it stretches credulity ... Mr. Whitfield is best in these passages, as he fires wildly with catty takedowns of every art-world passerby.
Julie Satow
Positive The Wall Street Journal Ms. Satow’s carefully researched book is compulsively readable ... She portrays the women with verve; we get a a glimpse into their lives.
Brian Merchant
Positive The Wall Street Journal Mr. Merchant’s narrative makes it easy to regard the factory owners as mustache-twirling villains who were enriching themselves off the labor of 7-year-olds ... Mr. Merchant is keen to see in the Luddites echoes of today’s demands for workers’ right.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
Positive The Wall Street Journal Ms. Petrzela’s account moves at a quick-lap pace: She scans the market from top to bottom, from the Equinox gym to the Zumba class in a local church hall ... The author’s own hybrid career gives her insider access to the fitness industry and how it operates, particularly the often-marginal economics for those teaching the classes.
Leila Philip
Rave The Washington Post The world she introduces to the reader is fascinating, both on scientific and historical levels. Biologically speaking, beavers should be fairly dim based on their brain-to-body ratio, but their teamwork and focus, as well as knack for engineering, suggest otherwise ... This lyrical exploration is a portal for readers to enter into the mysteries of that world themselves.
John Wood Sweet
Positive The Times (UK) Sweet brings vividly to life the New York community in which Lanah Sawyer grew up ... In a world in which her \'loss of honour\' could cost dearly, Sawyer’s feelings are only gleaned circumstantially, recorded by others. We see her by turns defiant and despondent, and despite much of her life slipping through archival cracks, Sweet makes us care about her, about her pursuit of justice, and how she made it through ... Sweet skids a little too far for my taste into speculations and marginal discussions (the landholdings of distant relatives and so on) before pulling back to the main story — Sawyer’s survival. This is the sort of book you want to snap shut at the end in relief, as you return from the murky injustices of history into the clear light of the present. No such luck.
Jon Butler
Positive The Wall Street Journal In God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan, Jon Butler considers these media innovations as but one part of religion’s evolving role in the city ... This tolerant, ecumenical spirit seems organic to a city in which religious buildings are abandoned and then repurposed by successive group ... Mr. Butler sees hope for the city’s religious future, in the form of evangelical Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and the arrival of new faiths from around the world.
Valerie Hansen
Positive The Spectator (UK) Hansen argues quite persuasively about the role of the Norse in creating new ways of trade and exploring different parts of the world ... Much of what is described here has only been fully understood in recent decades, as science has advanced to aid archaeology. Satellite mapping of terrain and DNA testing of remains have allowed narratives to be linked in ways scholars could only surmise in the past. I was fascinated to learn that the Norse made it to Madeira before the Portuguese — and that this was proved by the DNA of mice that came along for the trip. The Year 1000 is a tour-de-force and offers many new ways of thinking about the past.
Kassia St. Clair
Positive The Spectator (UK) The history of ‘women’s work’ being devalued is very much a part of textile history ... In this book, Kassia St Clair looks at the developments of textiles through human history, and explains how our ancestors’ lives were shaped by these changes. In her journey, she touches on everything from the materials that went into Neil Armstrong’s space suit to biotech firms experimenting with spider silk ... Having read St Clair’s accounts of factory workers’ horrific injuries, I’ll certainly think again before buying anything rayon. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look at the textiles in our world with a new understanding.