Sunday, September 18, 2016

Sunday Book Review Roundup


There's an exciting collection of reviews out this week.

In The Nation, Stephanie McCurry reviews Manisha Sinha's The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.  Also in Then Nation is a review of Habermas: A Biography by Stefan Müller-Doohm.  Finally, readers might find interesting this review essay on Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American and Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields.

The New York Times has a review of Richard Kluger's Indelible Ink: The Trials of John Peter Zenger and the Birth of America's Free Press.  Also reviewed is Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips (Blood at the Root is also featured on NPR's Fresh Air).

The Washington Post has a review of Candice Millard's Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill.  His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt by Joseph Lelyveld is also reviewed in The Washington Post.

His Final Battle has also received a review in The New York Review of Books.

At the New Book Network is an interview with Barbara Hahn and Bruce Baker, authors of The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans.  Also interviewed is Holly Allen, author of Forgotten Men and Fallen Women The Cultural Politics of New Deal Narratives.  Finally, there is an interview with Mireya Loza about her Defiant Braceros How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom.


On H-Net is a review of Elizabeth Dale's Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871-1972

Common-Place has released a new issue.  In it is a review of Mary Sarah Bilder's Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention.   Also reviewed is Padraig Riley's Slavery and the Democratic Conscience: Political Life in Jeffersonian America.

In the Los Angeles Review of Books is a review of Akhil Reed Amar's The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era.

Public Books carries a review of Sebastian Conrad's What Is Global History?.  Also in Public Books is a review of Roger Casement: The Black Diaries - with a study of his background, sexuality, and Irish political life by Jeffrey Dudgeon.

Finally, though it's well outside the realm of legal history, the New Yorker has an enjoyable review essay on Paul Freedman's Ten Restaurants That Changed America.