Many of the books reviewed this week are more on the -ish side of legal history-ish (along with a lot of biography). Together, however, they offer interesting reading.
In this week's New York Times, Edward Baptist reviews Beth Macy's Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South (Beth Macy is also interviewed on NPR here and here). Also in the NYT is a review of Gareth Stedman Jones' biography of Marx, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. Finally this week's NYT carries a review of Ron Robin's The Cold World They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter.Beth Macy's Truevine has also inspired a review essay in the New Republic.
In The Washington Post is a review of Sebastian Mallaby's autobiography of Allan Greenspan, The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan. Also in The Washington Post is a review of Russell Riley's Inside the Clinton White House: An Oral History
In the New York Review of Books is a review essay on voting rights that draws on Ari Berman's Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America and Zachary Roth's The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy.
In the Los Angeles Review of Books is a review of Richard Kluger's Indelible Ink: The Trials of John Peter Zenger and the Birth of America's Free Press.
In the London Review of Books Susan Pedersen reviews Robert Vitalis' White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations.
There has been a spate of presidential biographies reviewed this week. H.W. Brands' The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White is reviewed in the NYT and the Chicago Tribune. Finally, Robert Strauss is interviewed on NPR about his Worst. President. Ever.: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents.
Elizabeth Hinton's From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime is reviewed at HNN. Also reviewed at HNN is Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz and Dina Gilio Whitaker's "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans.
James Kloppenberg is interviewed at the New Books Network about his Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought. Caroline Winterer is also interviewed there about her American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason. Finally, there is an interview with Natalie Byfield on her Savage Portrayals: Race, Media and the Central Park Jogger Story.
In The New Rambler Review is a review of Richard Tuck's The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy.
In The Wall Street Journal John Fabian Witt reviews Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values, edited by Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli, and Lucy Bernholz.
