Category Archive: book reviews

To Plan Future Cities, Look First to the Past

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “racial inequality in America?” For many, images of the […]

Money for Nothing & Your Clicks for Free: Catherine Fisk on the History of Writers and Organized Labor

Many Americans might assume that copyright is a simple equation: someone creates a work, and then they own […]

The Dog Days of Winter: Reading David Halberstam’s Book on the Korean War

Even though I pride myself on being an American history buff, my knowledge of the Korean War had […]

Demanding the Impossible in the Time of Trump: On Activism and History as a “Usable Past”

This past April, I attended a local adaptation of En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time […]

Reconciling Race, Slavery, and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy

Following Dylann Roof’s use of a self-compiled archive of Charleston’s enslaved past to justify his June 2015 massacre […]

I Hope You Can Cover for Me: Mike Burr on the History of the Cover Song

Ray Padgett’s Cover Me gives the prestige treatment to the humblest of album afterthoughts and concert crowd pleasers:  […]

Joseph Rios Shadowboxes with Himself

In Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations, Joseph Rios evokes the image of an imposing Rocky Balboa as he opens […]

Spinning through Arab America (and More) with Randa Jarrar

Despite being a slim volume, Randa Jarrar’s remarkable collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, manages to take readers on […]