Reviewed Elsewhere
- Reviewed Elsewhere
Contributing reviewers Nell Altizer, Patricia Angley, Lucia Aranda, Alana Bell, Janet Butler, Judith Lütge Coullie, Michael Fassiotto, Lars Fischer, Marie-Christine Garneau, Théo Garneau, and Barbara Bennett Peterson provided the excerpts for this issue.
Publications reviewed include ABC, AJS-Review, American Quarterly, The Americas, Australian Book Review, Canadian Historical Review, Catholic Historical Review, Eighteenth-Century Music, Eighteenth-Century Studies, European History Quarterly, European Legacy, French Studies, (Toronto) Globe and Mail, Hispania, Hispanic Review, History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Israel Affairs, Journal of American Studies, Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Journal of Social History, Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Sport History, Journal of World History, Modern and Contemporary France, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books (NYRB), New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), Notes, Pacific Historical Review, Parergon, Reviews in American History, Revolutionary Russia, Russian Review, Shofar, Slavonic and East European Review, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Studi Francesi, Theatre Journal, El Universal, Victorian Studies, Women's Review of Books, Women's Studies, Women's Writing, and Zeitschrift für historische Forschung; and from South Africa, artSMart, Die Burger, The Citizen: Online, Cricketworld, D2: DemocracyVersionTwo, LitNet, NewsTime, Politicsweb, Public Eye Online, Saturday Dispatch, The Star: Tonight, Tydsrif vir Letterkunde, and Volksblad.
One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing. Diane Ackerman. New York: Norton, 2011. 318 pp. $26.95.
"The subtitle . . . gives you a good idea of the book's contents: life-altering illness, its effect on a married couple, and language as balm and bond. . . . Ackerman writes movingly about the effects of her husband's stroke on her [End Page 556] and on her husband, writer Paul West. She writes well about married life, its intimacies and childish pleasures. . . . If you've read her most popular book, A Natural History of the Senses, you'll know exactly what I mean when I say the writing—and the meditations—are 'very Diane Ackerman.' . . . At her worst, one can feel Ackerman reaching for the 'poetic' and failing to attain it." A mostly positive review. Andre Alexis. Globe and Mail, Apr. 23, 2011: R22. "I will confess I was deeply affected by 'One Hundred Names for Love.' Ackerman and West's is an extraordinary love story, and that a devastating stroke intervened has made it only more moving. Since we are all mortal, none of us will experience love without also experiencing loss. This book has done what no other has for me in recent years: it has renewed my faith in the redemptive power of love, the need to give and get it unstintingly, to hold nothing back, settle for nothing less, because when flesh and being and even life fall away, love endures. This book is proof" Abraham Verghese. NYTBR, Apr. 17, 2011: 8.
Toth points out that Cheever is "an ideal Alcott biographer," who "like Alcott, is the daughter to a difficult and powerful father." Of course, Alcott and Cheever are both novelists. Toth calls Cheever's prose "charming, graceful, and fast-paced." The biography reveals the difficulty that Alcott faced as a woman whose family, for most of her life, was "desperately poor and malnourished," and who found herself the breadwinner. Nevertheless, as Cheever points out, "As a nurse, [Alcott] was a Civil War veteran, and her grave is the only one in the Concord cemetery decorated with an American flag." Toth says that Cheever is a sparkling guide to Alcott's life. Emily Toth. Women's Review of Books 28.3 (2011): 28-29.
Lenin's Laureate: Zhores Alferov's Life in Communist Science. Paul R. Josephson. Cambridge: MIT P, 2010. viii + 313 pp. $29.95.
"Alferov . . . was aware of the ideological and political limits the government imposed on...
