Tag Archives: summer 2012

THE LAST UTOPIA: Human Rights in History

Samuel Moyn Harvard University/Belknap Press ($18.95) by Vladislav Davidzon As discourse, rhetoric, ideal, and mantra, the specter of “Human Rights” haunts and permeates our world. This wraith is a reflection of our deepest and most humane hopes and aspirations for a better future. Respect for the dignity of the body, entitlements to education and clean […]

TOLKIEN AND THE PERIL OF WAR

Robert S. Blackham The History Press (£12.99) by Ryder W. Miller The English era of World War I comes alive in this photographic and biographical tale of icon J. R. R. Tolkien's experience of youth, war, injury, and marriage. There are plenty of pictures and maps in this account by Robert S. Blackham, who connects […]

77 REASONS WHY YOUR BOOK WAS REJECTED

(And how to be sure it won’t happen again!) Mike Nappa Sourcebooks ($14.99) by Luke Taylor Kathryn Stockett knows the sting of rejection. According to a July 2009 article in The Telegraph, Stockett’s manuscript for The Help was rejected at least 45 times before it became a bestseller. Her perseverance paid off, but Stockett may have appreciated Mike […]

THE MESSENGERS

Malcolm Anderson The Experience Publishers ($17.50) by Scott F. Parker In Running in Literature, Roger Robinson argues that the marathon “is without parallel in being a major sports event that has entirely literary origins.” Those origins reach back to Herodotus, Plutarch, and Lucian, but it was Robert Browning’s 1879 poem “Pheidippides”—which recounts the legend of the […]

JOSEPH ROTH: A Life in Letters

edited and translated by Michael Hofmann W. W. Norton & Company ($39.95) by Steve Danzis Lars von Trier’s latest movie, Melancholia, is a study of how different personalities respond to catastrophe—literally the end of the world. I was reminded of the film while reading Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, edited and translated by Michael Hofmann. Roth, […]

AN AESTHETIC EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATON

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Harvard University Press ($35) by W. C. Bamberger The first paragraph of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Introduction to An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalizaton announces, “Globalization takes place only in capital and data. Everything else is damage control.” For Spivak, the “most pernicious presupposition today is that globalization has happily happened in every […]

THE STRANGEST TRIBE | EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN

THE STRANGEST TRIBE How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge Stephen Tow Sasquatch Books ($18.95) EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN An Oral History of Grunge Mark Yarm Three Rivers Press ($15) by Justin Wadland Eddie Vedder tore apart a hotel room when he found out Kurt Cobain had killed himself. “Then I just kind […]

PIERRE JORIS: Cartographies of the In-Between

edited by Peter Cockelbergh Litteraria Pragensia (€12) by Megan Burns “There is no difference between inside and outside at the poem’s warp speed.” —Pierre Joris, Notes Toward a Nomadic Poetics Cartographies of the In-Between collates a number of essays by various writers about Pierre Joris and his life as a translator, poet, and manifestor of “Nomad […]

THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF ROBINSON JEFFERS

With Selected Letters of Una Jeffers Volume Two, 1931-1939 edited by James Karman Stanford University Press ($95) by Robert Zaller When his reputation was at its height in the 1930s, Robinson Jeffers frequently received as much or more space in poetry anthologies as Frost, Stevens, Pound, or Eliot. In 1932, he was featured on the […]

DIARY

Witold Gombrowicz translated by Lillian Vallee Yale University Press ($20) by Steve Danzis Witold Gombrowicz, a Polish writer who spent most of his adult life in Argentina, escaped the Nazi occupation of Poland and later the Communist regime. John Updike and Milan Kundera hailed him as one of the greatest modern writers; over the past […]