Wednesday, July 27 2011
‘The President is a Sick Man’: Delightfully Underhanded Stories of Deception and Manipulation
Matthew Algeo's engaging book takes an obscure piece of history and crafts it into an engrossing narrative.
Friday, July 1 2011
Art and the American Evolution: The Arts of the Americas Wing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
In America, art tells the story of an early predominance of classical European ideals, the emergence of a national identity amidst civil war, and the melting-pot existentialism that dominated a media-obsessed 20th century.
Thursday, May 12 2011
The Civil War and the Uneasy Fabric of American Identity
America's obsession with the Civil War reveals not-so-invisible wounds that linger to this day in the landscape and the nation's psyche.
Friday, February 4 2011
Lynd Ward and Walt Disney: Illustrators of America’s Tumultuous History
Much as Walt Disney would do with his famed television programs of the '50s and '60s, Lynd Ward used his talents with watercolor, oil, brush and ink, mezzotint, and lithography to illustrate hundreds of inspiring historical biographies of true-life American heroes for children to admire and emulate.
Wednesday, February 2 2011
The Urinal: A Brief Functional and Aesthetic History
How the history of the urinal is the history of America.
Friday, February 26 2010
Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer
In John Stauffer's capable hands, the tug-of-war between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass is a study in the evolution of both a friendship and a political world view.
Tuesday, November 17 2009
East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler
Butler's book illustrates the fact that Amelia Earhart became the embodiment of adventurous spirit because she was such a formidable force.
Friday, October 9 2009
Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 by Chad Heap
If you want to understand race and sexuality in the United States, don't bother with policy -- look at entertainment!
Thursday, June 25 2009
Leaving India by Minal Hajratwala
“Each time we move, we must leave something of ourselves behind; perhaps then the map of a Diaspora consists, like a constellation, mainly of gaps.”
Monday, June 8 2009
Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi
Danisi and Jackson claim a definitive explanation for Lewis' dramatic final act, and move to dispel the more sensationalist and macabre embellishments that have tarnished his reputation in the 200 years since his death.
