Clayborne Carson and Tenisha Armstrong have edited The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume VII: To Save the Soul of America Jan. 1961-Aug. 1962 (University of California Press), and the book has recently been reviewed in the Washington Independent Review of Books."In Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, Danielle Keats Citron aims to change that situation, giving readers a sense of the scope and seriousness of the problem of cyberstalking and harassment; an account of existing law, both state and federal; and a set of thoughtful and persuasive proposals for improving both law and law enforcement."
The Federal Lawyer has its December issue up online with two sets of book reviews. The first set includes reviews of David Dorsen's Henry Friendly: Greatest Judge of His Era (Belknap) and two of John Lukacs's recent publications: History and the Human Condition: A Historian's Pursuit of Knowledge (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) and A Short History of the Twentieth Century (Belknap Press). A second set of reviews includes a review of Andro Linklater's Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership (Bloomsbury). Of the last, the reviewers write,"If you have a propensity for “big” history, with a big thesis, and supported by fascinating historical facts, accounts, and portraits, mostly pertinent to the argument, then you will enjoy Andro Linklater’s Owning the Earth. From the roots of American democracy to tales of Russian autocracy to revolutionary move- ments in Asia and South America, Linklater provides a rich history of the global evolution of land ownership. His scope is remarkably large. Whereas his previous work did an admi- rable job of depicting how the historical trans- formation of ownership in the United States was aided by the process of measuring and recording, he has expanded his range here into a somewhat unmanageable though always interesting tract."Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat by Helen McCarthy (Bloomsbury) has been reviewed in HistoryToday.
H-Net has added a review of Christine Knauer's Let Us Fight as Free Men: Black Soldiers and Civil Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press), a review of Elissa Helms's Innocence and Victimhood: Gender, Nation and Women's Activism in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina (University of Wisconsin Press), and a review of Kyle G. Volk's Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy (Oxford University Press).
The New York Review of Books has a review of three books on teaching under the title, "Why Is American Teaching So Bad?": The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein (Doubleday), Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) by Elizabeth Green (Norton), Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher by Garret Keizer (Metropolitan).
Christopher Hill's Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of America Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster) is reviewed in The Washington Post. Also in the Post is a review of Katha Pollitt's Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (Picador). From the review:
"Katha Pollitt may not appreciate my starting this review with her description of her own experience of motherhood, but this is my attempt to broaden her audience beyond the predictable cast for her small, powerful book. “People think of pregnant women as weak and vulnerable, but when I was pregnant with my daughter I felt as if I could put my hand in fire and it would only glow,” she writes in “Pro.” “I never felt alone: There were two of us, right there. I didn’t think of my child as an embryo or fetus. . . . I thought of her first as a funny little sea creature of indeterminate sex, and later, yes, as a baby, even though she was only a baby in my thoughts.”
To state what should be obvious, Pollitt, like most other women who support abortion rights, celebrates motherhood as a choice. The poet and columnist for the Nation is also one of the most eloquent champions for women’s reproductive freedom, and her latest book is a manifesto."
"But for every Elsie there is a Robert Harlan, light-skinned, straight-haired, who showed no interest in renouncing his blackness. Born a slave to his black mother and a white father, probably the master, James Harlan, he was raised in the same household as the white Harlan boys. His probable father made him a free man and he went on to make a fortune in the gold rush in California. He remained close to the other Harlans, one of whom was Justice John Marshall Harlan — the “great dissenter” of the Supreme Court — who argued on behalf of equal rights under the law in Plessy v. Ferguson."
