Peter L’Official has written an important book that speaks with powerful relevance to the state of Black life in America today — and the demands of Black Lives Matter.
Harvard University Press
Book Review: “Accounting for Slavery” — Plantation Roots of Scientific Management
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.
Commentary/Interview: “Du Bois’s Telegram” — Restricting Literary Resistance
Is there a disconnect between artists and meaningful resistance movements?
Book Review: “After Ireland” — An Insightful Survey
The critic settles too comfortably too often on a familiar trope — Ireland’s sense of promise squelched.
Book Review: Oscar Wilde Fights the Dying of the Light
Oscar Wilde’s life might have been tortured, but the writer never believed he had been disgraced, only rejected.
Book Review: Richard A. Posner — A Rare Judge Who Tells Us How He Really Feels
Why didn’t a legal mind as brilliant as Richard Posner’s get to the Supreme Court? One suspects his candor and bluntness.
Book Review: Polish Poet Czesław Miłosz — Master of the Telling Detail
For a reader without the reference points of mid-twentieth century Lithuania and Poland, this deeply researched biography can be a slog.
Book Review: “The Menorah” and “The Book of Aron”
Two books — one nonfiction, the other fiction — that deal with Jewish history.
Book Review: “Just Around Midnight” — A Revelatory Look at Race and 1960s Rock and Roll
Why did rock and roll become white? Music critic Jack Hamilton’s extraordinary new book provides a challenging answer.
Book Interview: Edgar Allan Poe — America’s Maestro of Suffering
The Annotated Poe invites readers to take a fresh look at Edgar Allan Poe and his far-ranging artistic legacy.