Eri Hotta’s biography of Shinichi Suzuki is about optimism, gentleness, doggedness, belief in children, humanity, and the affirmative properties of art in the face of violence and ignorance.
Harvard University Press
June Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Book Review: Through a Text, Too Darkly — The Life and Oration of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Overall, the ITRL is an improvement over earlier efforts, but it falls short of expectations, particularly when it comes to providing a way into the world of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola for those beginning the journey.
Author Interview: David Livingstone Smith on Dehumanization and “Making Monsters”
Making Monsters “is a wake-up call. We need to seriously address the phenomenon of dehumanization if we are to have any hope of constraining it when things get really difficult.”
May Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Book Review: “Burning the Books” — The Never-ending War on the Preservation of Knowledge
Burning the Books sometimes turns into a disturbing chronicle of mankind’s elemental hostility to learning: barbarians often first targeted libraries and archives.
Book Review: “Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin” — Naked City
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.
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.