Book reviews

Check out the latest reviews of University of Minnesota Press books.
Youth Services Book Review 5+ rating: "Perfect for a springtime read aloud for kindergarten through 3rd grade or higher."
This is a good one-on-one choice where it could be examined over and over again but would also be perfect for a springtime read aloud for kindergarten through 3rd grade or even higher. 5+ rating.
Outside Magazine: This Veteran Paddler Says Teenage Girls Need Adventure
Author Natalie Warren wants young women to disregard conventional rites of passage and get lost in the wilderness
Colors of Influence: "An absolute gift of awakening."
Renowned writer and activist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers an absolute gift of awakening through “Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies.”
Curious Minnesota: Where did suburban streetcar lines run and why were they removed?
At its peak, Twin City Rapid Transit had 524 miles of track and car­ried 200 mil­lion rid­ers each year.
Afghan Eye: "An important new study."
This book is based on research with a group of South Eastern Afghan Pakhtuns settled in Brighton, England. The men are first generation refugees with low educational attainment and work as taxi drivers, cooks, kitchen porters etc. These Pakhtuns maintain links with their exiled families in Pakistan and the author journeys on trips back to Pakistan with her Pakhtun research subjects.
Daily Dose of Architecture: Focusing on middle-class American houses.
By honing in on that substantial yet overlooked chunk of society between the rich and the poor, Hubka is setting his book apart from the hundreds, if not thousands, of books on American houses.
Kare 11: What are your kids reading?
Gia Vang talks with Kao Kalia Yang and Billy Thao.
Nursing Clio: Trans Care Webs
Hil Malatino’s Trans Care asks a seemingly simple question: What does care look like in trans lives?
The Guardian: 'Trans kids are not new': a historian on the long record of youth transitioning in America
Republicans seeking to restrict children’s lives claim trans youth are a ‘new phenomenon’. Jules Gill-Peterson explains how medical archives prove them wrong
NPR: Our Own People
As hate crimes against Asian American Pacific Islanders surge, Throughline reflects on Yuri Kochiyama's ideas around the Asian American struggle, and what solidarity and intersectionality can mean for all struggles.
Edge Effects: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the National Borders of the Imagination
A year after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, scientists and medical practitioners have a clearer picture of the virus. Yet one the biggest challenges that this crisis has posed for many of us is, no doubt, the difficulty of making sense of it. From the unclear origin of the virus to the variety of symptoms it presents to its “invisibility,” COVID-19 has kept a majority of us in the dark.
Community Reporter: The Intersectional Feminist of Early 20th Century St. Paul
The onetime honorary president of the Minnesota Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, Francis worked to convince nationally renowned intellectuals such as W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett to campaign for the cause of women’s suffrage in Minnesota.
Taipei Times: How pirated records from Taiwan kept Asia rocking
By the mid-1960s, the nation was churning out around 350,000 of them a month, many of which were diffused to Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines
Washington Post: China’s rapid urbanization will make another pandemic more likely
Nick R. Smith reads between the lines of the new World Health Organization report on the coronavirus
Native America Calling: Noopiming is Book of the Month
In “Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies,” seven beings within one entity named Mashkawaji help the narrative along through literary prose, dialogue and poetry.
Jezebel: The Visionary Organizer Who Offered Me a Model for Life
Grace Lee Boggs died in 2015 at the age of 100, having inspired generations of activists and organizers.
Foreword Reviews: "An earnest meditation on the dangers of fascism."
Haunting and elegiac, Solo Viola has its share of whimsy, but it’s all in service of an earnest meditation on the dangers of fascism that lingers long after the story is concluded.
Kirkus Reviews: A powerful tale about finding purpose and strength in the face of extreme adversity.
In the bleak Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, a brave group of young Hmong children, all cousins, rises up to help those they love.
Bookforum: A constellation of books that teach us to reimagine the present
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's syllabus for Bookforum. The works below can teach us how to encounter them if we pay attention. These writings refuse whiteness and colonialism by breaking open space, making room for worlds otherwise. This is world-building work, and these books’ exploratory nature makes them similar, in some sense, to speculative fiction. But these texts arise from and are rooted in the lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. The worlds they envision allow us to see the present—and the past—anew, and are life-giving precisely because they refuse the efforts by white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism to undermine them. They offer a study on how to read, or how to read differently, or perhaps how to listen.
Aufhebunga Bunga podcast: The Worst Class ft. Catherine Liu
Catherine Liu joins us to talk about the worst class in history (the PMC), and how and why they hoard all forms of secularised value. We discuss the development of the PMC as a class, figure out when it stopped being "heroic", and debate who the PMC'S leader might be. We conclude by asking whether the Left needs the PMC (or vice versa?).
"This substantial picture book narrative is graced by vivid, beautifully rendered details."
After her family gets electricity, The Range Eternal stove is replaced by a modern stove that doesn’t require tending, but clearly something is lost, too, in story that ends with the now-adult adult narrator finding the stove of her childhood in a thrift store and bringing it home to share the vision and history found in its flames, and the warmth of its heart with her family.
Seven beings serve as Mashkawaji, a fabulous creature that is frozen in ice, in this extraordinary novel.
How does one write a novel in static English language using material that is derived from a dynamic system of Indigenous oral storytelling and performance? Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who is a member of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg people of southern Ontario, uses a combination of genres — poetry, literary prose and dialogue — in her most recent novel, "Noopiming."
Metropolis Q&A: Mariana Mogilevich on New York City’s Path to a More Democratic and Diverse Civic Realm
Upon the release of her book The Invention of Public Space, the architectural historian discusses a little-known but pivotal chapter of urban history.
NYT: From Turkey to China to Norway, These Novels Take You Back in Time
Tiina Nunnally’s new translation captures the dark imperatives of a land where clan loyalties and ancient codes of honor have become ensnarled in the struggle between rising powers: the church and the royal court.
The Jacobin Show: The Professional-Managerial Class w/ Catherine Liu
What is the professional-managerial class and how is it standing in the way of economic redistribution? Catherine Liu explains how this group of elite workers has come to serve capitalism while insisting on their own virtue.
Washington Examiner: The dictatorship of virtue
Catherine Liu’s polemical new book, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, argues that the professional-managerial class-working class alliance was doomed from the start for the simple reason that the two classes’ interests are fundamentally opposed.
NYT: The Olympics Were No Fluke. American Women Are Excelling in Cross-Country Skiing.
Jessie Diggins won the notoriously grueling Tour de Ski, after she and Rosie Brennan notched 1-2 finishes in two consecutive stages.
Escape your living room for a canoe trip with the first women to paddle from the Twin Cities to Canada's Hudson Bay.
Midwest Living excerpt: Hudson Bay Bound.
New Books Network interview: John Hartigan Jr. with Galina Limorenko
Turning away from “thick” description to “thin,” Hartigan moves toward a more observational form of study, focusing on behaviors over interpretations. This vivid approach provides new and important contributions to the study of animal behavior. Ultimately, he comes away with profound, penetrating insights into multispecies interactions and a strong alternative to humancentric ethnographic practices.
Literary Hub: The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971
Interview with Michael Schumacher editor for The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971

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