Sunday, July 10, 2016

Sunday Book Roundup

This week's roundup is heterogenous and lengthy - hopefully there's something for legal historians of all stripes.

In this week's New York Times Lisa McGirr reviews Neither Snow nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service by Devin Leonard and How the Post Office Created America: A History by Winifred Gallagher.  (Leonard and Gallagher's books are also reviewed in the Washington Post.)

The summer issue of Dissent includes a number of provocative reviews (and the article "How War
Lost its Politics" by LHB founder Mary Dudziak).  Jonathan Levy has a review and meditation on Jefferson Cowie's The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics and Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. Levy's review is behind the paywall but it is well worth a read.

Also in Dissent is a review of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.  Finally, Gabriel Winant has an evocative review of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity by Sarah Haley and Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South by Talitha L. LeFlouria.

H-Net has posted reviews of a few books we've previously announced: Mari N. Crabtree on Talitha LeFlouria's Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New SouthEllen Pearson on Ted Maris-Wolf's Family BondsBrittany Gilmer on Emily Burrill's States of Marriage, and Amrita Shodhan on (LHB blogger) Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia.

This month's The Federal Lawyer includes a brief review of Susanna Blumenthal's Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture.  

The New Yorker has published a review essay of Mitchell Duneier's Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea.

The New Books Network has a couple of interviews of possible interest.  One is with Sabine Arnaud and is about her new book On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820.  Adam Mendelsohn is also interviewed about his The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire.

This week's Guardian includes a review of Eric Hobsbawm's Viva La RevoluciĆ³n.  Also in the Guardian is a review of Philippe Sand's East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity".  East West Street also received a review at The Irish Times.

In the Times Literary Supplement is a review of Pamela Haag's The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture.

NPR interviews Linda Greenhouse about her and Michael Graetz's The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. (The book also receives mention as a "nonfiction book not to be missed" over at the Los Angeles Times.)  NPR also interviews Nancy Isenberg on her White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America 

The New Republic also engages with Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

History News Network has a review of The Last Great Strike:  Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America by Ahmed White.

And finally, in The New Rambler Review is a review of Adultery: Infidelity and the Law by law professor Deborah Rhode.