Reviews and Comments

Book does exactly what the subtitle implies: provides a serviceable overview of the institution of slavery in Texas prior to the Civil War.

One of my favorite short stories which I read in college was Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivner." But Bartleby's got nothing on Yeong-hye. Her decision to become a vegetarian sends her family into a tailspin, as Han explores how an effort to renounce violence and reject the world's demands provokes a more and more violent reaction from those around her. Aspects of the story are absurd, but are told in a straight, just-the-facts-ma'am style that heightens the sense of how stark (yet simple) Yeong-hye's actions are. She determines, for her own reasons, to live as she wants, and the novel illustrates how challenging it is to take such a stance.

Han narrates, from multiple viewpoints and time periods, a 1980 uprising that was brutally put down by South Korea's military government. At the beginning of the book I was struck by how ordinary people banded together to help each other -- in this case, working tirelessly in a makeshift morgue to help families identify their loved ones, all the while listening for the army's return. Han evocatively carries the story through time and shows the lasting effects of the government's brutality. And yet, the novel also demonstrates that people can be moved to come together and fight for each other, even in the face of brutal, senseless violence.

Not the book I thought it would be, but still an interesting and worthwhile read. Cohen explores several sets of friends whose bonds are close without passing over into romantic love. Her work illustrates how impoverished our language, legal structures, and social norms are when it comes to describing and honoring these types of bonds. The stories she tells demonstrate that deep friendship is possible and valuable, and just how hard people have worked to make it work. The payoff, in an enriched life that others may never fully understand, seems entirely worth it to all the people involved. The book may lead you to question some of the conventions which limit how we let others into our lives.

Miller's book is a good overview of the history of the gag rule, a story with complex parliamentary maneuvering that Miller tells with patience and good humor. He has mastered the intricacies that John Quincy Adams used to press the issue and those that Adams's opponents used to suppress the same. The book features many lengthy quotations to give a sense of the proceedings (and get a sense of Adams's acerbic wit), but the citation format will be frustrating to the serious researcher attempting to locate the materials.

Howard's history includes some good detail on individual cases and useful appendices, but interpretatively this book has been superseded by books such as Sean Kelley's American Slavers.

Late in the novel, one of the characters says that "Chosen family … sometimes grow closer in sympathy than any other" (page 227). I'm not sure if they would have said "chosen family" in the time period of the novel -- the phrase struck me as a modern one -- but there's no question that it is a major and poignant theme of the book, as the characters we meet struggle to survive during the period of the U.S. Civil War and its aftermath. Phillips draws some wonderful characters, presents some incredibly harrowing but realistic scenes, and the ways in which these people coalesce into their chosen family is meaningful and consequential.

A blistering jeremiad about Appalachia and what you, frankly, are getting wrong about the region. Although it refers to Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, the book is not a point-by-point refutation of Vance's work. Rather, the book asks, pointedly, why we allow so many of the stereotypes about the region to endure. As our national press will no doubt continue to take voyages into "Trump country," Catte's guide to the region will continue to serve as a useful corrective to the media's assumptions.

Here in DC, we have a series of "Business Improvement Districts (BID)," which I confess I never really understood. At their most visible, they employ teams to clean up trash within the district and try to keep things generally tidy. Schaller's book explores the history of these districts (a relatively recent phenomenon in DC, although not elsewhere). Her research uncovers how BIDs give the impression of public service, but often remove decision-making from the public sphere and put it in the hands of landlords (who may or may not be the actual businessmen operating in the neighborhood). There is also a fascinating chapter on how different people characterize their neighborhoods, comparing long-time residents to newer residents, and so on. The book is a useful primer on this topic, and surely the lessons from DC are applicable elsewhere.

Short, punchy, to the point, and necessary. Since Snyder is a European historian, he necessarily draws his examples from Europe, but you don't have to reach that far back in U.S. history to think of analogous circumstances. His first takeaway is crucial: do not obey in advance.

A woman who has retreated from speaking takes a class in Ancient Greek taught by a man who is slowly losing his sight. That's a bald statement of the plot, but Han movingly explores language and communication through her characters that have physical and emotional blockages to communication. I found her writing on the physicality of communication to be quite evocative. I don't claim to understand everything that happened in the novel, but it did make me think about what we go through when we decide to reach out to other human beings.

A fun little romp! Smith and Rusch have a good feel for the characters and the dialogue feels true to the show. My only gripe is that I think Kira probably has more self-confidence than she is portrayed with here -- but overall a good read.