Let me preface this review by saying that I believe academic scholarship should always be written with a priority for accessibility: the language should be evocative and immersive, perhaps even bordering on fiction, without sacrificing nuance and academic details. Histories in particular are tasked with chronological transport; it is my belief that they should do this without requiring a maximal effort on the part of the reader.

Fletcher’s The Black Prince does all this, and with an ease that belies the hard work of writing. The Black Prince sends the reader back in time so effortlessly; the reader can feel the tension of the Florentine court, the potential for danger at every meal (poison) and around every corner (gangs of rich young men armed with daggers and arrogant tempers).

The Black Prince is academic writing for a general audience done right.

The Black Prince ostensibly revolves around Alessandro de’ Medici, the half African, half Florentine illegitimate son of a Medici scion (though which one is a matter of debate in this work); however, it also about much more than that. This history offers the reader a velvet texture of Renaissance Europe through vivid accounts of the intricate Habsburg, Vatican, French, and Florentine connections via marriage, money, and ambition.

That said, race is less of a category of analysis here than is class, religion, or aristocratic birth. This is no shade on Fletcher’s work; The Black Prince makes the profound point that race — as we understand it — was not an analogous factor in this period of time, in this Renaissance world. Indeed, it was class, religion, aristocratic birth, wealth, and connections which were the more influential factors in matrices of power. “Race” did exist, but functioned and featured in aristocratic society very differently than it would a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years later.

Fletcher does take us through the span of Alessandro’s life; the book is bookended by his birth and death and includes all the major events of his life and that of his domain, Florence, in his lifetime; but this is a work about the Renaissance and the politics of the Apennine peninsula in this period. 

Yueran’s prose in Cocoon is to die for. I cannot express how effortless it was to read this book; opening it and laying eyes on the page was all I had to do and Yueran did the rest. It was like being carried on a gentle wave down a winding river.

That said, it was a very long, slow-moving river at times and often I found it hard to track with the direction Cocoon was taking me. I grasped that there was a mystery, but the typical sense of urgency a thriller engenders was missing here, lost in the literary focus on the characters and their interior narratives. It was, for me, both a deeply satisfying for that reason and also frustrating in that it wove around the plot circuitously. I still cannot decide how much I enjoyed the novel or the degree to which I was disappointed by it.

The novel spans three generations of two families, their histories twisted together by the events of China’s Cultural Revolution and communist regime. The characters have fallen into the chasms created by the divisive policies of the Cultural Revolution and it is their reconciliation with that fact which the reader witnesses. There are mundane tragedies: a father and son estranged by the shifting values, a marriage begun out of spite, a wife abused, a child abandoned. Then there is the mutual tragedy — a crime — which threatens both families’ futures, an act that arose out of the political climate of the Cultural Revolution. This is the great mystery of the novel. What was that horrific crime? Why and how could it traverse down through generations?

The two narrators are the 3rd, latest generation of these two families, the grandchildren of the Chinese Old Guard and the children of the “sent down” youths of the revolution. They are childhood friends and enemies simultaneously, caught in the mess of their families’ tragedy. The fallout of China’s cultural and political upheaval is told through their eyes. Through their perspective we see the actions and feel the torments of their parents and grandparents and the effect of these massive cultural shifts on familial cohesion.

They are the generation that grew out of and yet distant to China’s traumatic history. Theirs is a moment of a different upheaval: China’s return to a capitalist society, the abandonment of the austerity of the 1960s and 1970s. The novel dwells on their generation’s angst as well: the shifting ideas of sex, love, and success.

This is an epic multigenerational tale, filled with characters that are so perfectly flawed as to be real. The meandering path through their traumas, their lives, and their losses is well worth the long walk.

This is the kind of history and historical writing that excites me! Kaufmann’s Black Tudors is a gem because of its topical focus, that is, centering black history, its accessible language, and smooth, flowing prose. I was very excited to read this book and it exceeded expectations!

Black Tudors is split into ten content chapters, bookended with an introduction and conclusion. Each chapter focuses on a specific individual, a black person who left a mark — sometimes a small one — in the historical record for us to find. These individuals were not lords or aristocrats (like Alessandro de Medici, Duke of Florence), but ordinary working folks who came to England through a number of avenues: trade, servitude, attached to diplomatic entourages, etc. While each chapter focuses largely on the individual who lends the chapter their name for its title, Kaufmann also includes evidence of other Black individuals from North and West Africa, the Southern Mediterranean, the Middle East. The result is a rich historical landscape of a hidden minority community and the cultural, social, and political context of their Tudor world.

The reader gets a textured, almost tactile experience of Tudor life, not from an aristocratic or royal perch, but from below. Kaufmann grants the reader entry into the working, merchant classes, into the world of the laborer, the Tudor servant class. This is a culture without a “middle class” in the way in which we understand the term, but there is a servant class, a working class, a peasant class, a mercantile class. Kaufmann gives us a view of these worlds from within and through the lens of foreigners, Africans, and Muslims.

Kaufmann adds to a growing number of histories which add color to the whiteness of European history. It joins the work of Marc Matera, Olivette Otele, and others which have and continue to excavate blackness in a traditionally white-centric history. That said, this is hard work; the act of research in these kinds of histories is difficult as so many layers need to be peeled off to discover hidden individuals in the historical record. I fully acknowledge Kaufmann’s effort and applaud their thorough research.

As an example of historical method and empiricism, Black Tudors shows the reader how to weave a history and a prosopography from very little archival material. This makes this book an excellent historiographical case study for an under– or graduate level seminar on historical methodology. 

The premise of Schechter’s Butcher’s Work is intriguing enough to entice any fan of true crime to pick it up: Serial killers and murder are nothing new, why have we forgotten some crimes and remembered others? And, more curiously, what are those cases which we have forgotten? The easy answer is that they weren’t horrendous enough, disgusting enough, criminal enough to earn a place in our long, collective memory. But the cases in Butcher’s Work dismisses that possibility quickly; the crimes highlighted in this work are all that and more chilling. The fact that they have disappeared from our remembrance is itself quite a horrific notion.

Butcher’s Work is divided into four sections: Butcher’s Work, The Poison Fiend, Lady-Killer, and The Ragged Stranger. As their titles suggest, each one focuses on a particular method or victim of murder. There is a featured case of each, but interspersed within the pages of the chapters are cameos of other criminals employing the same method. Collectively they form a creepy landscape of crime, where trusting another human being is something to fear. Lady-Killer was one of my favorite sections. Marriage and murder form the central focus here, a gendered violence perpetrated by men against women. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but DANG, how did these men get away with this? Oh, right, but still!

Schechter is a marvelous story-teller. The prose flows, as compellingly as the stories and characters. And, as a researcher myself, I deeply appreciate the depth and details Schechter has excavated in this work. The result is not only a focused, historically rich, and keen archival piece of work; Butcher’s Work is also a nuanced landscape of American life in the 19th century. Schechter brings to the reader’s attention how it is not only the ambition of the criminal, but also the systems and structures of society that permit and foster these crimes. How else might a man such as Hoch in Lady Killer commit bigamy and murder so successfully and remain for so long undetected? What gave him the confidence to believe in his own acquittal? Of course, the criminals here were apprehended, so there is a more optimistic ending. We can rest knowing the authorities — police, witnesses, lawyers, courts, etc — did succeed in forcing them to confront their crimes. But, I could not help but wonder how many others got away with it altogether? The idea is spine-chilling.

Butcher’s Work is a fantastic read for any fan of true crime and 19th century American history.

The Beckoning World is a complex novel: intelligent and sentimental in equal measure, carefully restrained and yet brimming with emotion, grounded in reality but fanciful in its fantasy of baseball celebrity. This is a tale of ordinary desire, ambition, failure, and the sacrifices of love that we can recognize in others and in the society at large, and yet there is enough fiction here to allow us to deny the existence of this tragedy in our own lives.

If you love Stoner by John Williams or Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, Reader, you’ll appreciate the agony of life Bauer portrays here, the quotidian kind, the slow descent into ordinariness that we all must confront, whether we accept it or not. The Beckoning World is as much a tale of the world beyond our borders as it is the world within our constraints that we cannot escape. The call is not always one to adventure, but a tether.

That is not to say this novel lacks adventure for it does not, it has adventure in buckets. The Beckoning World is also a coming-of-age journey, tracing that phenomenon’s mental and physical challenges and explorations. There is a real adventure here — and the kind of fantasy that some of us only dream of. Reader, you’ll live vicariously through Henry’s eyes, live through the fantasy of childhood — his and perhaps your own.

It is hard to pinpoint what The Beckoning World is about for to outline its plot captures only a small part of its appeal. Its characters are the real attraction here: Earl, Emily, Henry, Babe, Gehrig, Walsh, Lottie, Rooster. They are manifestations of persons in our lives; flawed and perfect. Bauer develops them with succinct, incisive prose that, in silences, invites the reader’s imagination to participate. Bauer captures our investment quickly, and Reader, you’ll be rewarded quickly; the story moves at a steady pace even as it lingers in some moments longer than others. Like Williams and Nabokov, novels of that mid-20th century period, Bauer’s prose is the sort I enjoy: narrative, descriptive (but not overly so), structured.

The novel is set in Midwest America in the early 20th century. There is a pastoral quality to it, one that is generic, recognizable, comforting. This element of the novel is cast in a sepia light, historical and still otherworldly: this is a time and place lost to us and only visible through a veil of nostalgia. It begins with Earl, a young man from the Midwest who — like many of us — is faced with the choices of adulthood and responsibility. Emily, a young woman from the same rural background must make the same decisions, balance desire with practicality. The result is Henry, who becomes the central focus of the novel and who is the focus of the great baseball adventure that ensues.

Through a fantastical encounter with baseball, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig and a journey across the country Earl and Henry come to terms with their loss, life, and future. This is a bildungsroman of the American kind.

A highly enjoyable, thoughtful read. The Beckoning World is a wonderful addition to the genre of the classic American novel.

Lenore Manderson was one of the primary appeals of this collection for me. Having read some of her more historical scholarship I was intrigued about this diversion into water as a subject. Her collaboration with the poet, Forrest Gander, also made me pause over this title.

I am not sure what I expected, but was pleasantly surprised to find that Water’s Edge is less a work of scholarship than an academic, literary contemplation on climate change, the significance of water, and the role of water in the intimate spaces of our lives. The collection is vast in its scope, though narrowly focused on its topic, water: poems, visuals, images, photographs, sociological and anthropological essays on researching water, and essays on the ways in which we move water and how it moves us.

My favorite — and indeed one of the most surprising essays — was not on water directly, but on chickenshit. I will say no more, but that incongruity may intrigue you as much as it did me. The reward was immediate. There is more connection between water and chickenshit than I gave credence to before reading this essay, not that I paid much attention to chicken excrement…

Indeed many of the essays and poems in Water’s Edge are rewarding and the quickly so: they are short, spanning only a few pages each at most. Their length makes this a quick and flowing read, not unlike a river (perhaps that was intentional!)

As for the intended audience of this work… It is academic and its language and form are designed for an aesthetically sensitive mind, one that is poetic and will appreciate the nuances of a breath or the sensation of a light spray of water. The reader should expect to work for their reward. The content is intellectual and demands a certain degree of effort to excavate some of the deeper meanings embedded in the text. I would expect no less from poets and scholars. That said, I could see this text yield fantastic discussion and organic analysis in a social science graduate or upper level undergraduate seminar. The content, language, and complexity allow for reflection on multiple levels. Poetry and literature are excellent fodder for analysis; I use novels in my history courses frequently.

A very thoughtful read on water and our future with this quotidian, essential substance.

I am sucker for a good true crime non-fiction, any time — and Blake’s Victorian Murderesses absolutely satisfied my every expectation of the genre. It was gory and chilling, all the more so because of the historical grounding of each case covered here.

Each chapter — there are seven of them — examines a specific killer and the details of her crime(s). Four of them focus on British murderesses: Sarah Drake, Mary Ann Brogh, Kate Webster, and Mary Ann Cotton, while the remaining three cross the Atlantic to provide accounts of the disturbing murders perpetrated by Kate Bender, Lizzie Borden (of course), and Jane Toppan. I was grateful that Lizzie got only a chapter; the fame of her crime has sullied my interest in her case. I’ve simply read it too many times for it to invoke any novel shock, but I acknowledge that the Borden murders warrant a place in a book like this.

What makes Victorian Murderesses such a fantastic read is the way in which Blake colors in the context of these women’s lives; not only do we get a rare glimpse into their worlds, but the Victorian world as a whole, especially as it was for women of a certain working and middle class. The reader also gets to see how these women got away with their crimes for a significant part of their lives and how police operated to discover them. In some cases, like with Sarah Drake, I could not help but feel a bit sorry for the murderess as much as the victims; institutionalized sexism drove some of these women to extreme lengths — though I cannot say I condone their decisions to take innocent lives. In some cases, like Cotton’s and Webster’s I found myself wondering how it was possible for them to commit so many crimes without getting caught earlier! I wonder at how it was that Lizzie Borden became so famous when these other women committed so many more criminal acts.

Kate Bender and the Bender family were — for me — the most dastardly, the creepiest of the seven chapters. Their crimes were like those out of a grisly, B-rated horror where a family of four drives down a lonely farm road… and is never seen again… Brr. I feel shivers thinking of it now.

This was a fantastic true crime read, fun and gore all around, enough to keep you wanting more.

To fans of feminist stories, witchy tales of realistic romance, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, this is the novel for you! As the eponymous name implies, Hester is about the woman behind Hawthorne’s famous heroine. Albanese begins with the premise that she was a real woman, that the Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s fame was based on a person from his own past, fantasized into the character of The Scarlet Letter.

In this backstory, Hester Prynne is a young Scottish woman, Isobel Gamble, who arrives in the New World for the express purpose of leaving behind the old one. It is an adventure tale, interspersed with romance, lust, avarice, and desire for belonging. The novel follows Isobel through her first few years in the northern colony, around a hundred years after the terrible witch trials at Salem, in the early 1800s.

But the magnetic charm of Hester doesn’t hinge on this legendary and vile history, even though the witch trials still bestow both a lurid glamour and an ugly stain on those whose ancestors took part in it. The community as a whole has a long memory and a store of dark secrets: the witch trials and the African slave trade (though illegal, the formerly enslaved and the enslaved still feel the manacles of bondage in all kinds of social, cultural, and institutionalized ways).

Simultaneously, the novel does not stand on the appeal of the fictionalized Hester or the “real” Isobel, though the characters in Hester are well-crafted as complex, nuanced individuals filled with flaws and virtues. No, the real pull of this story is its vivid portrayal of Puritan life as a gendered, stratified, prestige-hungry society. Hester spreads out for the reader a vast and complicated landscape of social politics. The world Albanese crafts is a real one. The reader gets a look into the world of Puritan men and women that lies beyond the stereotypical discussions of marriage and sexlessness and religion; Albanese’s Isobel is a working woman — a seamstress — and we see through the eye of her needle into the labor women do, both socially as the pillars around which society is upheld and economically as employers, employees, merchants, and consumers. We also see the emotional labor women are tasked with, according to society and their men — husbands, brothers, fathers, and so on.

The women of Hester are not powerless as a result of their labor. They do, in fact, wield immense influence and can — in some circumstances — exercise a great deal of agency. They work within the patriarchal framework of Puritan society to defy it, uphold it, mold it to their needs and ambitions. Isobel Gamble is only one of the women in Hester around whom the novel revolves. There is also Isobel Gowdie who is Isobel Gamble’s ancestress; Mercy, a woman of African descent, formerly enslaved; Felicity, a shrewd merchant in Salem; Nell, a fellow immigrant; and the Silas women, members of Salem’s old guard elite. Hester is about all these women and the world they lived in and shaped like clay through their ambitions and circumstances.

The story takes all the way to Pearl, the narrator in Hawthorne’s novel, but it is not the Pearl that he created for us; she is Isobel’s Pearl. Any fan of The Scarlet Letter will find continuity and novelty in Hester.

This is a gorgeous novel; its prose is simple, succinct, and sharp, much like the crisp starkness of Puritan collars and its story is ornate, a twist of knots and tiny stitches like the floral embroidery of Salem’s women.