Sunday, August 7, 2016

Sunday Book Roundup


This week's roundup features, yet again, a heterogeneous assortment of reviews.

In the New York Times is a provocatively critical review of Andrew Scott Cooper's pro-Pahlavi The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran.  Also reviewed is John Strausbaugh's City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War.  

In the Washington Post, Daniel Kanstroom raises a number of questions about the history of discretionary deportation in his review of John Lennon vs. The U.S.A.: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History.  Also in the Washington Post is a review of The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan.

On H-Net this week is a review of Daniel Richter's Native Americans' Pennsylvania.  Also on H-net is a review of Mario Jimenez Sifuentez's Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest.   Finally, there is a review of Lennard J. Davis' Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights.

This week the New Books Network carries several interviews of potential interest:  Eric Schickler is interviewed about his Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965.  Jon Hale is interviewed about his The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.  Finally, there is an interview with Russell Rickford about his We Are An African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination.

The Times Literary Supplement has published a review essay on Thomas Laqueur's The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains.

The Atlantic has as extended essay reflecting upon Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

In the New York Review of Books is a review of Robert J. Gordon's economic history of productivity in the United States, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War

History Today carries a review of Heyday: Britain and the Birth of the Modern World by Ben Wilson.

N+1 has a review of Andrew J. Bacevich's America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.

For the tired academic (or person), the New Republic's review of Anna Schaffner's Exhaustion: A History may prove enlightening (and perhaps enlivening) Sunday reading.

For thoughtful and timely commentary on the history of Rio and the IOC, Public Books has a joint review of Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink and Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics by Jules Boykoff.