Indiana University Press blog

Book reviews: Connected in Cairo

"Connected in Cairo provides an accessible and instructive reading of the everyday construction and negotiation of what is oftentimes glossed as globalization, and will be of value to students and academics interested in the importance of social imagination in the making of local worlds in global times." —Journal of African History

"This book is thus a valuable contribution for scholars in a variety of social sciences who have taken the wave of revolutions in the Arab world as their subject matter, and for those who will be paying close attention to how these elites in Cairo and elsewhere respond to existential threats to their structural privileges." —Anthropological Quarterly

Book review: Music and the Language of Love

"[Gordon-Seifert] has presented readers with an elegant, insightful study on a critical turning point in French baroque composition just before the premiere of Lully’s groundbreaking Cadmus et Hermione in 1673. Scholars of seventeenth-century music, as well as singers interested in integrating these airs into their repertory, will find in it an approachable, valuable resource, as well as an engaging account of the social and cultural mores of the time." —Notes

Book review: A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes

"[McGerr's] study, scholarly and intuitive in equal measure, demonstrates that what may appear to be an inert status symbol, is actually a highly charged, and exquisitely wrought, political document." —Renaissance Quarterly

Book review: The Fighting Pattons

"Sobel's updated version of the acclaimed history of the remarkable military family focuses on the legendary World War II battlefield genius General George S. Patton Jr. (1880-1945) and his son Major General George Smith Patton (1923-2004) who forged his own distinguished military history in the Korean and Vietnam Wars." —Armchair General

Book reviews: Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity

"Leigh H. Edwards's Johnny Cash the Paradox of American Identity offers a wideranging study of a compelling figure in American popular culture, and will be of interest to both fans of Johnny Cash and scholars in the fields of popular music studies, gender studies, and American studies." —Journal of American Studies

"One book representing the new wave of country music studies is Leigh H. Edwards’s Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity. Edwards takes an American icon of country music and places him solidly in the field of American cultural history, dealing with such timeless subjects as class, masculinity, and religion." —History Compass

Book review: The Glimpse Traveler

"Boruch is a poet, and that fact is made evident in her svelte, impressionistic prose ... The book clips along at an addictive pace and in what seems like no time at all reaches its staggering climax and then concludes with an equally stunning finale." —Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction

Book review: Howard Fast

"Gerald Sorin tells Fast's story in this engaging and fluidly written biography. He draws connections among Fast's Jewishness, his writings, and that most curious part of his life: his long embrace of the Communist Party. In so doing, Sorin illuminates a complex part of American Jewish life in the twentieth century. ... Sorin is a brilliant biographer who proves to be both sympathetic and critical of his subject. This is Gerald Sorin's second National Jewish Book Award. He won in the category of history for his Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent, in 2003" —Jewish Book World

Learn more about Howard Fast in this WAMC interview with author Gerald Sorin.

Book review: Anne Frank Unbound

"Anne Frank Unbound ... tell[s] us a great deal about the myriad uses to which one individual story has been and can be put. ... In addition to these ethical and political questions, the essays engage productively with the aesthetic choices made by writers, visual artists, filmmakers, performance artists, and comedians, who recast Anne Frank in a variety of media and situations. ... If Anne Frank Unbound is any indication, the diary will certainly continue ... to raise a set of persistent ethical, political, and aesthetic questions that have been with us since its first publication." —Women's Review of Books

Book review: Starring Madame Modjeska

"Starring Madame Modjeska is based on very solid archival research, yet it is written with lightness and grace—qualities inspired by the character of the formidable protagonist of this excellent book." —Slavic Review

Book review: Prince Twins Seven-Seven

"This book is essential reading for students of culture and personality in folklore and anthropology and oral history and autobiography." —Journal of American Folklore