Reviews

The Aesthetic Scientist

In a finely drawn outline of a life that was filled with activity, with meetings, with far-reaching observations and brilliant imaginings, Andrea Wulf has made a wonderful contribution to the record of Humboldt’s life and work.

Séjour’s Drama of Emancipation

Despite the recent trend in American scholarship emphasizing the transnational and cross-cultural dimensions of American culture, Victor Séjour is rarely mentioned. Elèna Mortara’s Writing For Justice: Victor Séjour, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in the Age of Transatlantic Emancipations addresses this gap.

Our Comic Ends

The magic trick that Chast performs in her cartoons is to make laughter out of the dirty secret of life: it is an alternately stressful and humdrum affair, and then it is over.

An Old Couple’s Search for Dignity

No one—in either real or reel life—wants to confront the difficulties of aging, the imminence of dying. The point is best proved by Leo McCarey’s glorious Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), the most unbearably moving and resolutely unsparing work Hollywood has ever made about the elderly.

Living For the City

For readers who are new in town, this volume is a tour through a Washington they will not learn about in any guidebook. For others, reading this collection is like, yes, flying home.

Gateway to the World

St. Louis and Empire shows how the city became a victim of its own success, and why It is vital that the region pursue its agenda abroad, while attending to vital affairs at home.

The Long-Suffering Soul Singer

Dreams to Remember is not without its redeeming features. Redding fans may appreciate Ribowsky’s enthusiasm for his subject, and the book is less inflammatory than a 2001 Redding biography so sensational it sparked a libel suit. Readers looking for new insights about Redding and 1960s soul music, however, should leave it on the shelf.

The Court of Obama

The notion that sports leads politics, represented in feel-good accounts of Jackie Robinson ending racism, have long since failed to pass muster. Yet perhaps the true audacity of hoop in the age of Obama is that off-court political issues are considered by the widest swath of American publics when voiced by those on it.

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