Art for the Public’s Sake
Please Touch is a handsome coffee table book, the kind that invites casual examination but typically poses no real intellectual challenges to its readers. Or so one might initially think.
Reviews
The World Samba Made
Hertzman’s book on samba illuminates a common struggle for music scholars and cultural historians: how can musical sounds inform our cultural histories?
What Price Peace in Our Time?
Though clearly in favor of the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapons capability in return for lifting sanctions, the strength of Parsi's account is in its ability to speak to many of the players.
Archtypes: Hook-Ups
"The Dogs' Office"
With God on Our Side
A book like this intensifies a sense of black community for its readers by being racial, yet universal. It is almost a totem.
“Wise Unto Salvation”: The Fugitive Slave’s Leap of Faith
Never Caught is a fascinating, absorbing account of slavery and freedom in the early days of our nation and is especially accessible for the non-specialist, non-academic reader.
How to Draw Comics and Influence People
Last Girl Standing, the autobiography of cartoonist and comic book historian Trina Robbins, tells the story of a New York Jewish girl “who didn’t grow up in a dysfunctional family.”
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jonathan Eig has compiled the most interesting and informative details from the best of the Muhammad Ali biographers, boxing historians, and Ali’s friends and family to give readers a comprehensive look at a complex life both blessed and cursed by the sports world’s toughest profession.
Tsiang of China
Hsu’s thoughtful and beautifully written account of H.T. Tsiang’s efforts to add to the China experts’ conversation about his native land is a brilliant study of “what ifs?”