Book reviews

Check out the latest reviews of University of Minnesota Press books.
Dual review: Tom Conley in Leonardo
Leonardo reviews Tom Conley's THE SELF-MADE MAP and SueEllen Campbell's The Face of the Earth (California).
Duck and Cover: Metropolis reviews Fallout Shelter
As David Monteyne’s fascinating volume, Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War, makes clear, the most important thing to remember is that these structures were not meant to advertise blast protection.
Duluth News Tribune article on Twin Ports by Trolley
See the city as it once was—a pictorial history of the trolleys that traversed Twin Cities neighborhoods.
Duluth News-Tribune: Artist spaces | Baking up delicious cookies, stories
If you’re lucky, Beatrice Ojakangas will pull from her freezer a sheet filled with 77 frozen rounds of chocolate chip cookie dough, drop a dozen or so onto a cookie sheet and slide them into the top of her double-decker oven. No timer required.
Duluth News Tribune Beatrice Ojakangas column: 'Hotdish' or 'casserole,' it's all delicious
In some parts of the country, a casserole is considered to be a “covered dish” and around here it is a “hotdish.” Once when I mentioned “hotdish” (not in Minnesota), I was met with laughter. A hotdish, they thought, is a certain kind of lady.
Duluth News Tribune: 'Herlands' provides detailed account of lands populated by women
In a new book from the University of Minnesota Press, Keridwen N. Luis looks at lands organized and populated entirely by women. The title of "Herlands: Exploring the Women's Land Movement in the United States" alludes to "Herland," a 1915 feminist novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which explorers discover a society of women who reproduce asexually, resulting in a peaceful, egalitarian and exclusively female world.
Duluth News Tribune: Metsa's memoir reveals a lot, but not everything
Longtime singer-songwriter with a distinct voice Paul Metsa, whose first gigs were at Iron Range gatherings, has just released a tell-almost-all memoir.
Duluth News Tribune on Hawk Ridge
The paper interviews Laura Erickson about her latest book, which includes illustrations by Betsy Bowen of Grand Marais.
Duluth News Tribune: Tell Me Your Names and I will Testify
Mention of Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify by Carolyn Holbrook
Duluth News-Tribune: 'What did my ancestors eat': Sean Sherman’s cookbook ‘The Sioux Chef’ is a return to from-the-land, pre-colonization foods
If you're foraging in Duluth this time of year, think chaga, highbush cranberries — not to mention cedar, which Sean Sherman would use for tea, cedar-braised beans, soup stock. In fact, whenever someone is coming up this way, he said he asks them to bring some cedar back to Minneapolis.
Duluth Reader Best of the Northland 2021
Linda LeGarde Grover is a professor of American Indian Studies at UMD, a novelist and former Reader columnist. “Gichigami Hearts” is her fifth book, a collection of stories, legends, poetry, and memoir set in Duluth and spanning history over hundreds of years, from a Native American perspective. The Minneapolis Star Tribune calls it an “artful weaving of family, history, myth and magic.”
e-flux excerpt: Information Fantasies
A cosmological view that was formed and developed around the last three centuries BC, when a unified and centralized political order arose for the first time in the history of China, “resonance between heaven and mankind” provided legitimacy and guidance to the imperial power and its rulership.
E3W: "Ben-Moshe's book delivers on ambitious goals"
The objectives and contributions of this book are multiple and complex, making for an impressive project spanning the range of an introduction, seven chapters, and epilogue.
Eastern Daily Press: ‘Continued ruination’: Should some of Norfolk and Suffolk’s historic buildings be allowed to fade?
A professor has sparked debate by publishing a book suggesting climate change, falling budgets and other pressures would in future mean some heritage sites could not be protected.
Eating and Drinking with Heavy Table's James Norton: Lake Superior Flavors
On the Current's Morning Show.
EBR: What is Queer Game Studies?
Addressing a lacuna in games studies, Jason Lajoie makes a case for why a queer games studies is needed, and he shows how these two areas of study are united in Bonnie Ruberg’s and Adrienne Shaw’s collection.
Ecstatic Truth: 'Ferocious Reality' Dissects Herzog's Doc Aesthetic
International Documentary Association reviews Eric Ames' book.
Eden Prairie News: Documenting Twin Cities wildlife
The senior manager of wildlife for the Three Rivers Park District and the former director of the Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley have come together to create a book on the habitats and wildlife of the Twin Cities.
Edge: History of Lesbian Avengers chronicled in "Eating Fire"
A review of Kelly Cogswell's memoir.
EDGE on the Net: George Cukor
A review of Patrick McGilligan's now back-in-print book.
Edgy City: Urban/Rural Space and Ho Chi Minh City
Video interview with Erik Harms, author of Saigon's Edge, with the blog Subversities.
Edible holiday gifts (and recipes!) with Beth Dooley on Kare 11
Beth Dooley demonstrates her recipe for chocolate truffles, published in THE NORTHERN HEARTLAND KITCHEN.
Editor's Choice: The Essential Ellen Willis
Review in The Buffalo News.
EdWeek: What I Want From My Next Teaching Job
I just lost my job. This happens in education all the time. I was new to my district, and my district needed money, and a whole bunch of us had to go. A lot of us (me included) hoped to stay, hoped we would escape the teacher shell-game—transfers and retirements and re-hires—that happens this time of year.
Electric Lit: White Futurism No Longer Holds Center Stage in HBO's "Station Eleven"
The adaptation of the novel disrupts the typical apocalypse story by allowing marginalized characters to survive
Electric Literature: Letters from Tove
Winter reading list that includes Letters from Tove by Tove Jansson
Electric Literature: What God Is Honored Here?
Review of What God Is Honored Here? from Electric Literature
Electric Review: Journal Entries, Poems & Jottings From A Once In A Millennium Poet
On Allen Ginsberg's IRON CURTAIN JOURNALS.
electronic book review: Nature is What Hurts
In this review of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects, Robert Seguin contemplates the implication of the text’s eponymous subject on art, philosophy, and politics. The “hyperobject,” a hypothetical agglomeration of networked interactions with the potential to produce inescapable shifts in the very conditions of existence, emerges as the key consideration for the being in the present.
Electronic Empire Expo: The First World Problem of E3
Review of Games of Empire by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter in PopMatters.