In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Reviewed Elsewhere

Contributing reviewers Patricia Angley, Alana Bell, Janet Butler, Michael Fassiotto, Lars Fischer, Marie-Christine Garneau, Noel Kent, Barbara Bennett Peterson, and Forrest R. Pitts provided the excerpts for this issue.

Publications reviewed include American Scientist, Australian Book Review, British Journal for the History of Science, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Business History, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Canadian Historical Review, Classical Review, Dance Research Journal, Early Medieval Europe, English Historical Review, French History, French Studies, (Toronto) Globe and Mail, Historian, Journal of American Folklore, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Sport History, Journal of the Early Republic, Labour/Le Travail, Modern and Contemporary France, Modern Intellectual History, The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Notes, Pacific Historical Review, Parergon, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Research in African Literatures, Review of English Studies, Science, Shofar, Social History of Medicine, Sociology, Studi Francesi, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), and Women’s Review of Books.

Adams, Clover
Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life. Natalie Dykstra. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 318 pp. $26.00.

“Dykstra’s biography introduces a much greater complexity to the woman who is so often remembered as the wife of a famous man and a clever hostess. If Dykstra’s account does not provide any greater certainty about the life and death of Clover Adams, it does offer her readers a thoughtful, poignant reflection on the nature of marriage and on the human condition. To understand Clover’s life through the lens of her art is to better grasp ‘connection and disconnection, vitality and loss’ that mark the intimate relationships forged by individuals. In so beautifully illuminating these currents in Clover’s life, Dykstra does indeed restore Clover’s full humanity to her.”

Natalie Taylor. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 34.4 (2012): 373–75. [End Page 834]

Aldridge, Ira
Ira Aldridge: The Early Years (1807–1833). Bernth Lindfors. Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2011. 401 pp. $55.00.

Ira Aldridge: The Vagabond Years (1833–1852). Bernth Lindfors. Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2011. 262 pp. $55.00.

“Ira Aldridge is surely one of the most fascinating cultural figures of the nineteenth century, and deserves to be much more widely known than he is. . . . In a remarkable new two-volume biography, Bernth Lindfors captures the life of the only nineteenth-century actor of color in Europe, and as such has done much to remedy a most unwarranted lacuna. . . . The book is liberally peppered with reviews from local papers, as well as accounts from managers and other players. We learn as much about nineteenth-century provincial theater in Great Britain as we do about Aldridge. . . . Lindfors’s book is a joy to read. Besides capturing Aldridge’s remarkable personality, many other cultural figures come alive as well, such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Edmund Kean and his equally famous son Charles, William Charles Macready, Ellen Tree, Charles Matthews, and many eccentric theater managers. . . . This is a wonderful two-volume book, and it is my hope that it is successful in bringing Aldridge’s remarkable story to more people.”

Matthew Yde. Research in African Literatures 43.3 (2012): 137–38.

Astaire, Adele and Fred
Fred and Adele. Kathleen Riley. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 241 pp. $27.95.

Riley “has set out to do something very difficult—to summon up a sublime dance partnership for which there are no moving pictures.” She “has brought to her account of this legendary team the heart of a fan and the mind of a scholar. . . . Her writing is engaging and self-effacing—rather like Astaire’s dancing.”

Paula Marantz Cohen. TLS, July 20, 2012: 7.

Ataturk, Kemal
Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography. M. Sukru Hanioglu. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011. 273 pp. $27.95

“Among the numerous virtues of Hanioglu’s clear-eyed dissection of the Ataturkian legend is its refusal to regard Mustafa Kemal as wholly exceptional. Although Hanioglu wisely appreciates everything that Ataturk did to set Turkey on its modern course, he is less overwhelmed than earlier writers by...

pdf