Books

My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married by Joey Franklin

Praise from Reading Glutton:

“Franklin’s essays are just deep enough not to be trivial, just light-hearted enough not to be heavy, and readable enough not to be dull. Highly recommended!”

The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony by Ladan Osman

Review from Rain-Taxi:

“Ladan Osman conveys a language and logic that is disturbingly fresh; it leaps from one observation to another and speaks familiarly yet obliquely enough to make us listen a little harder.”

Remembering French Algeria by Amy L. Hubbell

Recommendation from CHOICE:

“Hubbell’s Remembering French Algeria is an intriguing and important contribution to scholarship on the representation of Algeria in literature and film.  The study focuses on writing by members of the Pied-Noir community, the European citizens of French Algeria who fled the colony during or shortly after the war of independence.  Hubbell (Univ. of Queensland, Australia) highlights the importance of exile in crafting and maintaining Pied-Noir identity.  She demonstrates that memory of the lost homeland is carefully maintained through repetition and return, twin strategies to reconnect the writer and the community with a lost homeland but that also constantly renew the pain of separation.  Hubbell’s analysis focuses in particular on the writing of Marie Cardinal and is supported with examples from Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, and Albert Camus, among others.  Hubbell also includes numerous examples, both written and cinematic, by members of Pied-Noir cultural associations.  This work will be valuable for scholars of literature and film about Algeria, and for those interested in issues surrounding memory, exile, and cultural identity.”

—D. L. Boudreau, Mercyhurst University

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

How Winter Began by Joy Castro

Review from the Star Tribune:

“If literature can be a solace, it can also be a spur. These stories by Joy Castro ask us to notice the invisible: a small boy, the “girl” polishing our silver, the older woman hosting the meeting.

 Castro is us, alert to each new experience.”

Seymour Hersh: Scoop Artist by Robert Miraldi

Praise from America Magazine:

“…an illuminating biography of Hersh, who is unquestionably one of the world’s most important—and controversial—journalists of the past 50 years. Miraldi, a longtime professor of journalism at the State University of New York, New Paltz, does exceptional work bringing Hersh to life as an archetypal character of his trade: his always-loosened tie, his round-the-clock calls to sources, his endless battles with aggravating editors as he fearlessly pursues the truth.”

Travels with Frances Densmore

Edited by Joan M. Jensen and Michelle Wick Patterson

Recommendation from CHOICE:

“Frances Densmore (1867–1957) was a pioneering ethnomusicologist who field-recorded and transcribed thousands of songs traditional to dozens of North American First Nations.  Mentored by Alice Fletcher, Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), Densmore was supported by the BAE until the Depression cut its funds in the 1930s.  Postwar, Densmore worked with Smithsonian archivists copying her wax cylinders onto vinyl discs; as Stephanie Thorne, Judith Gray, and Thomas Vennum describe in the book, Densmore’s meticulous ear forced engineers to fine-tune copies.  Feedback from Indian singers listening to the copies further enhanced their accuracy.  Densmore’s BAE monographs on Lakota Sioux, Chippewa (Anishinabe), Ute, Navajo, Seminole, and other national music genres and the thousands of field photos she took assist Indian communities today as well as scholars.  The book details Densmore’s half century of fieldwork and discusses her ‘new woman’ career eschewing domesticity.  (Her sister shared Densmore’s Red Wing, MN, home and much of her fieldwork travels.)  Scholarly but engaged with Densmore’s forging a ‘new woman’ scientist role and with researchers’ movement from hearing Indian music as ‘primitive’ to appreciating its sophistication, the book is interesting, contributing to ethnomusicology, women’s studies, and the history of American Indian studies.”

—A. B. Kehoe, emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

 Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

A Grizzly in the Mail by Tim Grove

Review from Illinois Heritage Association:

“Many people will enjoy this book: anyone with a love of history, but also students currently wondering whether to go into a history-related profession; mid-career staffers who sometimes might question their own decision to do so; and long-established seniors who can look back at their own careers with a sense of recognition—and satisfaction—as they read about Grove’s.”

Authors

David Davis

Author Q&A with Publishers Weekly.

Yael Raviv

First post in author blog series on Jewish Book Council.

Nancy Plain

Winner of the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award, Children’s Books category.

“In this marvelous biography for teens, Nancy Plain brings John James Audubon to life.”

Soner Cagaptay

Author article in Wall Street Journal.

Clayton Anderson

Author Q&A from Space.com.