book reviews

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  12/5/2020
  

  Performance Anxiety: How Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines Shaped Soldiers’ (Mis)Understandings of the Vietnam War (Review)

  by Nicholas Utzig

  A consideration of Gregory Daddis's book "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/29/2020
  

  When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives

  by Samuel Clowes-Huneke

  A new book by historian Monica Black suggests that the irrational was never absent from the postwar order—and, moreover, that florid eruptions of mystical thinking often accompany periods of extreme political upheaval. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  7/27/2020
  

  Present Absences: A Century of Struggle in Palestine (Review)

  For Khalidi, the British mandate established two parallel realities in Palestine: an embryonic nation-building project for the Jewish minority and the continuation of colonial policy for the Arab majority, whose question of self-determination was left unaddressed.

• 
• SOURCE: Law & Liberty
  6/22/2020
  

  A Master Historian at Work

  by George H. Nash

  The award-winning historian's reflections on the writing and teaching of history offer a master class in the scholar's art. 

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/4/20
  

  Philanderers, Predators and Pickup Artists: A History

  A review of SEDUCTION: A History From the Enlightenment to the Present by Clement Knox.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/7/20
  

  When White Supremacists Overthrew an Elected Government: David Zucchino's Wilmington's Lie Reviewed

  “Wilmington’s Lie” is a tragic story about the brutal overthrow of the multiracial government of Wilmington, N.C., in 1898.

• 
• SOURCE: LA Review of Books
  12/13/19
  

  A New Kind of Bondage

  by Jason S. Sexton

  TONY PLATT’S Beyond These Walls provides a relentless critique of the United States’s carceral regime, prompting us to rethink how criminal justice institutions operate.

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  Accessed 12/5/19
  

  Foreign Affairs Reviews James Banner's Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today

  Banner describes the book as an exercise of “historians’ civic office.”

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/24/19
  

  ‘Cabinets of Curiosities’ delves into the history of collectors and their stunning, strange acquisitions

  In “Cabinets of Curiosities,” Patrick Mauriès tells the history of some truly awesome collectors.

• 
• 10/27/19
  

  New Jim Mattis Memoir Avoids Criticizing Trump, Instead Lashes Bush, Obama, and Others

  by Jeffrey J. Matthews

  With consequential elections forthcoming now is the time for Mattis to tell voters the unvarnished truth about Donald Trump.     

• 

• ‘Return to the Reich’ Review: Refugee Redux

  The true story of a Jewish boy from Freiburg who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission.

• 
• 10/13/19
  

  The Original War on Terror

  by Eric Laursen

  A review of Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli, Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe.

• 
• 10/13/19
  

  Author Christian Di Spigna Is On a Mission to Honor a Revolutionary War Hero

  by Michael McQuillan

  A review of Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero.

• 
• 10/13/19
  

  The Moral Compass of America’s Most Distinguished Soldier and Statesman

  by James Thornton Harris

  George Marshall’s honesty and modesty were a key to his success.

• 
• 9/29/19
  

  Myth vs History: A Study of Vietnam War Stories and Journalism

  by Jerry Lembcke 

  Australia’s Vietnam by Mark Dapin is important for the rectification it brings to public memory of Vietnam War homecomings.

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Currents
  9/23/19
  

  Judith Butler Discusses History of Anti-Semitism in Review of Bari Weiss's How to Fight Anti-Semitism

  by Judith Butler

  "A lack of historical analysis...afflicts this impassioned book."

• 
• 9/22/19
  

  A Family History of the Red Scare

  by David L. O'Connor

  A review of David Maraniss' A Good American Family: My Father and the Red Scare.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Monthly
  Accessed 9/19/19
  

  Allen C. Guelzo Reviews Sidney Blumenthal's Latest Installment of His Biography of Lincoln

  by Allen C. Guelzo

  "Blumenthal never allows the intensity of Lincoln’s story to flag for a moment."

• 
• SOURCE: Not Even Past
  9/4/19
  

  Reviewing Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive by Marisa Fuentes (2016)

  by Tiana Wilson

  Fuentes’ work contributes to the historical knowledge of early America through her focus on violence and how it operated during slavery and continues today through archives. 

• 
• SOURCE: University of Arkansas News
  9/4/19
  

  Historian Caree Banton Publishes New Book on Race and Identity in Atlantic World

  Banton closely examines the Afro-Barbadians and provides a transatlantic approach to understanding the political and sociocultural consequences of their migration and settlement in Africa.