Sunday, July 21, 2013

Sunday Book Review Roundup

This week readers can find two reviews of Maury Klein's Call to Arms (Bloomsbury Press), one in the Wall Street Journal and a second in the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt of Johnathan Yardley's take in the Post:
"The story of how America became the “great arsenal of democracy” is the subject of “A Call to Arms,” and I can’t imagine it being told more thoroughly, authoritatively or definitively. "
This week's New York Times reviews Mason B. Williams's City of Ambition (W.W. Norton & Co.) For those looking for audio options, the NYT book review podcast discusses the book here. Edward Glaeser summarizes the book:
"But, as Mason B. Williams’s fascinating new book “City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York” reminds us, La Guardia’s success rested to a large degree on Franklin Roose­velt’s decision to “channel the resources of the federal government through the agencies of America’s cities and counties.”"
Fiona Rieds reviews Panikos Panayi's Prisoners of Britain (Manchester University Press), a social history of Britain's German prisoners during the First World War. 

And the New Yorker has two slightly different contributions to this week's Sunday roundup: an article discussing Eudora Welty's 1963 New Yorker essay "Where is the Voice Coming From?" (about Medgar Evers' murderer); as well as a few bits of legally related book chat.