Books

Book Review: “Accounting for Slavery” — Plantation Roots of Scientific Management

May 14, 2019
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In this valuable study, Caitlin Rosenthal isolates an assortment of business practices and technologies that reflect the sophistication of New World plantation economies — dispelling myths of their romantic crudeness.

Book Review: “The Feral Detective” — Strictly From Hunger

May 14, 2019
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Farcical fight and sex scenes might be forgivable, but the “mystery” is so barely there it utterly fails to engage — and that’s lethal to a novel in this genre.

Book Review: The Lives They Wrote

May 2, 2019
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Two autobiographies by women who had some experience in legitimate theater, but they each gave their strongest allegiance to dance, specifically one choreographer.

Book Review: John Hersey — Reporting Truthfully, at All Costs

April 29, 2019
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John Hersey emerges in this book as a disciplined journalist who held steadfast to an admirably singular goal.

Book Review: “Necropolis” — A Book of the Russian Literary Dead

April 28, 2019
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This memoir offers an invaluable, broad look at intellectual Russia before and after the revolutions of 1917.

Book Review: Walter Gropius — The Very Human Face of the Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus

April 26, 2019
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Award-winning author and critic Fiona MacCarthy is out to change wrong-headed perceptions of Walter Gropius in her biography. And she succeeds.

Book Review: “The Ruins of Ani” — Into the Mystic

April 19, 2019
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The Ruins of Ani illuminates one of those rare places that leaves visitors feeling they might have to dust off the word mystical to describe the experience.

Book Review: “In Search of Stonewall” — Illuminating Queer History

April 19, 2019
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The essays here give readers an eyewitness glimpse into mid-century queer life will intrigue (if not shock) younger LGBT+ people.

Book Review: “The Club” — When One Lived for Good Conversation

April 18, 2019
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The Club is an entertaining and absorbing journey to another century, when the art of communication and the spirit of thoughtful engagement attracted men and women of acute sensibilities.

Book Review: “The Ideas That Made America” — Not Made in America

April 17, 2019
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Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s The Ideas That Made America provides an exciting, if quicksilver, tour through intellectual history.

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