Upcoming Author Events
Sidney Thompson will be giving a talk during the Memphis Area Authors’ Festival at 2pm on April 6th, 2024.
Join Gail Shaffer Blankenau for Lunch @ the Library on Wednesday, April 4th, at 12:10pm. She will discuss her new book Journey to Freedom. This talk is open to the public and can be found in the 4th Floor Auditorium, Bennett Martin Public Library, 136 S. 14th Street.
Reviews
Review in Publishers Weekly:
“Chinoy’s easygoing narrative sheds light on a fascinating web of characters who brought about a shift in election reporting norms, including CBS’s Walter Cronkite and UNIVAC co-inventor John Mauchly. It’s an appealing deep dive into the intersecting history of journalism, technology, and electoral politics. “
Review in Publishers Weekly:
“Blankenau paints a remarkable portrait of antebellum turmoil. It’s a vital resurfacing of a largely forgotten story.”
Review in Lilith Magazine:
“Forget I Told You This is as richly layered, as lush and resonant as the bricolage Amy employs in her art. As such, I’ve had to leave a lot out of this review: a lost love, sexy interludes with another mysterious stranger, allusions to Dante, the Holocaust, and the Museum of the Extinct Race, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe, even Harriet the Spy. Call it what you will, this is a novel about art, about making it and sharing it, a love letter to art in a world that has forgotten how much we need it.”
Review in Journal of Sport History:
“Charlie Murphy is an excellent addition to the existing body of work in book-length baseball biography. Cannon masterfully moves beyond his subject’s on-field baseball achievements, often the singular focus of a baseball biography, by providing a well-balanced mix of Murphy’s off-field contribution to the baseball industry, his cultural influence, and an exploration of his character.”
Review in Journal of Sport History:
“[T]he authors’ considerable research will prove invaluable to fans and novice baseball historians, as well as established scholars that can use the book as a starting point for further research into the lesser-known figures that receive scant attention here. Instructors will find the mini-biographies of baseball activists useful for lectures, supplementary reading, or assignments. In short, Drier and Elias have composed a welcome contribution to baseball’s historiography that privileges the game’s counternarrative of dissent and rebellion.”
Review in Journal of Sports History:
“In The Sisterhood: The 99ers and the Rise of U.S. Women’s Soccer, Rob Goldman provides an overview of the rise of the US Women’s National Team (USWNT), from its ragtag start in 1985 to its iconic penalty-kick-victory in 1999. Based on interviews with thirteen players, one coach, and a handful of others close to the team, Goldman offers biographical information about key athletes and accounts of key matches. Taken together, the thirty-five chapters of The Sisterhood offer a descriptive history of the USWNT.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“Elliott West has delivered a big book on a big topic: a history of the trans-Mississippi West from the 1840s to the late nineteenth century. It is a work of synthesis, largely based on hundreds of secondary sources, although West stirs in plenty of material from his own primary research in government documents and the archives of every major depository of western materials. Despite its nearly six hundred pages, Continental Reckoning is consistently engaging. As West has demonstrated in a shelf of important books, he has a discerning eye for the telling detail.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“Throughout the entirety of The Camp Fire Girls Helgren is attuned to the ways in which girls shaped their own experiences within the organization. Helgren is careful to not assume that girls accepted and reflected adults’ expectations for Camp Fire programs. Methodologically, Helgren grapples with the reality of girlhood histories and the challenges of locating girls in archival sources. The Camp Fire Girls is much more than an institutional history of Camp Fire and instead, demonstrates the complexities and contradictions of the creation of a modern American girlhood.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“This monograph touches on the fields of French empire, Indigenous sovereignty, the Atlantic World, and the U.S. West. Like a delicious charcuterie board, the scholars behind French St. Louis offer a sampling of methodologies and approaches for us to understand not only St. Louis, but American history.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“In telling Coolidge’s story, Lewandowski reveals a physically imposing, devout, sympathetic, and, perhaps above all, witty individual who cared deeply about the future of his race. Coolidge was also complex, and his desire to help his fellow Indians sometimes led him to take controversial stances. He supported the Dawes Act and allotment of Indian land, he willingly sent his children to the Carlisle School, he failed to condemn the Wounded Knee Massacre, and he censured the peyote movement. Instead of chastising Coolidge for a perceived lack of foresight, Lewandowski explains how his subject’s actions were influenced by a belief in assimilationist policies and his need to reconcile his love for his people with his duties as a Christian and a patriot.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“[Union General] is solidly researched and effectively written. Even experts in the fields that Shea dives into will learn something new. Those interested in the Civil War, the West, or the nineteenth-century United States generally will find Union General informative and worthwhile.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“. . . Cattle Beet Capital makes an important reading for anyone interested in how nature, capital, farmers, and the state interacted—in the West and beyond—to create a pillar of the industrial food system in the United States.”
Review in Western Historical Quarterly:
“McCormick’s use of history as a tool for corporate ends was not unique, but its story is a valuable case study of how history, and historians, were used to create modern brand identities. Although only briefly mentioned in the conclusion, readers will see parallels between McCormick and others, such as Henry Ford and John Rockefeller, who employed history for their own ends. This book will be of interest to anyone who studies agricultural, business, or public history.”
Review in Jewish Press:
“As Halakhic Man enters its third generation, supported by this excellent new edition, is it poised for increased growth and influence or is it declining as it heads towards me’ah ve-esrim? Only time will tell. But we all should appreciate Lawrence Kaplan for his latest iteration of this work and to JPS for publishing it.”
Review in Khabar Magazine:
“While Inside the Mirror is set in a specific place and period, the themes explored are universal and still valid. At heart, the novel is about young women finding their true identities and fighting all odds to stay true to their sense of self.”
Review in Expendable Mudge Blog:
“This read is treading a well-worn path in its use of twin sisters on opposite sides of the eternal struggle for freedom of self-definition. Resisting patriarchy, Jaya refuses to knuckle under to her father’s will for her future. It is of course the case that she suffers personal and social consequences for her self-willed rebellion.”
Review in Journal of Labor and Society:
“The St. Louis Commune is the first book on the 1877 general strike to place it in transatlantic perspective and within the history of European politics and immigration.”
Review in Bevis Baseball Research:
“The authors meticulously researched their portrait of Donlin’s life, offsetting the lack of primary-source research by mining a prodigious mountain of intriguing secondary sources, especially expert-author material from both the baseball and theatrical fields in addition to contemporaneous newspapers in both fields. They utilized a disciplined approach to avoid excessive on-field baseball material to focus instead on the deeper off-field elements of Donlin’s personality and societal impact.”
Review in Journal of the Civil War Era:
“An excellent book, A Failed Vision of Empire will benefit historians of the U.S. South, Civil War–era politics, and foreign affairs. Some Western historians will value it for raising concerns about placing the term ‘manifest destiny’ at the center of their field.”
Review in The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books:
“There is good material on several well-known ballplayers who were part of the [Chemical Warfare Service] – including two very famous Hall of Fame players, Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb. Leake, through excellent research, finds quotes about how the players felt about serving their country with the ‘work or fight’ orders of that war . . . Readers who enjoy military literature or baseball books will want a copy of this book.”
Review in Jewish-Christian Relations:
“[T]he book is eminently readable, and is accessible to the non-specialist . . . Whether or not one ultimately accepts all of Knohl’s conclusions, his thesis is presented clearly and logically, provokes thought, and is worthy of serious consideration.”
Author Interviews
Interview in Poets & Writers
Interview in Arts Calling
Interview in Toyota Sports Talk
Interview in Chicago Writes Podcast
Interview in Hooks & Runs podcast
Interview in East Coast Doughboys
Interview in KXEL Live
Arnold “Smoke” Elser with Eva-Maria Maggi
Interview in the Write Question
Interview and feature in The Missoulian
UNP blog 