Book Reviews

The World Begins with Yes: Poems

Erica Jong. Red Hen Press, 2019. 403 pages. $16.95.

The Scars We Carve: Bodies and Wounds in Civil War Print Culture

Allison M. Johnson. Louisiana State University Press, 2019. 208 pages. $45.00.

Breakpoint: Reckoning with America’s Environmental Crises

Jeremy B.C. Jackson and Steve Chapple. Yale University Press, 2018. 296 pages. $26.00.

Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom

David W. Blight. Simon and Schuster, 2018. 888 pages. $37.50.

Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason

Princeton University Press, 2019. 344 pages. $29.95.

Veiled Presence: Body and Drapery from Giotto to Titian

Paul Hills. Yale University Press, 2018. 224 pages. $55.00.

Carleton Watkins: Making the West American

Tyler Green. University of California Press, 2018. 574 pages. $34.95.

Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes: How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture

Douglas E. Cowan. University of California Press, 2019. 240 pages. $85.00.

Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog

Kurt Caswell. Trinity University Press, 2018. 242 pages. $24.95.

Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South

Pam Kelley. New Press, 2018. 304 pages. $26.99.

No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

Daniel Kennefick. Princeton University Press, 2019. 403 pages. $29.95.

The Year of Blue Water

By Indira Ganesan  The foreword to The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi is written by Carl Phillips, the poet and judge of this year’s Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. It is a celebratory and sensitive assessment of this quietly assertive, nuanced book. I suggest you skip it to savor after reading Yanyi’s book. […]