- Reviewed Elsewhere
Contributing reviewers Patricia Angley, Lucia Aranda, Alana Bell, Michael Fassiotto, Lars Fischer, Noel Kent, Barbara Bennett Peterson, and Forrest R. Pitts provided the excerpts for this issue.
Publications reviewed include American Quarterly, American Scientist, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Canadian Historical Review, Catholic Historical Review, Civil War History, Common Knowledge, Economic History Review, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, European Review of History, European Romantic Review, Folklore, French History, French Studies, (Toronto) Globe and Mail, Henry James Review, The Historian, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Historische Zeitschrift, History, History Workshop Journal, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Iranian Studies, Israel Affairs, James Joyce Quarterly, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal of Islamic Studies, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Modern Drama, Music and Letters, New England Quarterly, The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), Nine, Notes, La Nueva España, Pacific Historical Review, Political Studies Review, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Review of English Studies, Revolutionary Russia, Science & Education, sehepunkte, Sewanee Review, Shofar, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Subrayado, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), Twentieth-Century Music, Victorian Studies, Women’s Review of Books, Women’s Writing, and Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung.
The Juggler’s Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us. Carolyn Abraham. New York: Random House, 2013. 380 pp. $32.00.
Carolyn Abraham has written a “stunner of a book about tracing her family’s history through DNA analysis. The Juggler’s Children is many things, each one spellbinding: a thrillerish quest for origins, a continent-spanning travelogue and an eye-opening foray into the annals and ethics of genetic science. . . . Abraham’s book is riveting not just because of its superb writing [End Page 423] and suspenseful storyline, but because, in the end, it’s not just about her, it’s about us.”
Emily Donaldson. Globe and Mail, Apr. 20, 2013: R18.
Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life. Natalie Dykstra. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 336 pp. $26.00.
Fetterley points out that this is a “meticulously researched” biography of Clover Adams that aims to “bring Adams back to life.” Adams was married to Henry Adams, and she suffered from depression as well as the oppressive patriarchal attitudes of her husband and nineteenth century ideology. Dykstra’s biography of Clover Adams is “immensely readable [and] written with grace and ease, compassion and enthusiasm,” according to Fetterley, who applauds “Dykstra’s devotion to her subject and the respect she has shown [Clover Adams] through the literary and scholarly quality of her biography.”
Judith Fetterley. Women’s Review of Books 30.3 (2013): 19–20.
Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science. Christoph Irmscher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 434 pp. $35.00.
Irmscher “tries to salvage what he can of Agassiz’s reputation as a science popularizer, Ice Age theorist, and natural-history-museum founder. He concedes that Agassiz’s worst ideas are hopelessly discredited, but perhaps the more interesting question is why they’ve persisted. As Irmscher’s subtitle suggests, Agassiz may be a ‘creator of American science’—just not in a good way.”
The New Yorker, Mar. 11, 2013: 75.
“‘Distinctly undelightful’ is how Irmscher describes Agassiz in this evocative new biography. But irreconcilable contradictions make for interesting biographies. And Irmscher doesn’t allow the ‘undelightful’ aspects to disappear in the service of myth making. Instead, he draws out the complexities of his subject and helps us to see them as part of the fabric of 19th-century science. There’s no airbrushing in ‘Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science.’”
Rebecca Stott. NYTBR, Feb. 3, 2013: 13.
The Female King of Colonial Nigeria, Ahebi Ugbabe. Nwando Achebe. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2011. $29.00.
“Perhaps most impressive . . . is the way that Achebe uses Ahebi’s story to offer insight into much broader themes of twentieth-century Nigerian and Igbo history. . . . Also notable is the author’s honesty when she encounters portions of...