This Week’s Hot Reviews

The Dream of Reason
Jenny George | Copper Canyon Press | 9781556595196 | April 2018
The Dream of Reason reveals a young poet who is unafraid to explore difficult territory.”—Rain Taxi

1919
Eve L. Ewing | Haymarket Books | 9781608465989 | June 2019
“A mixture of grand voices, hushed laments, and ardent dreams, 1919 resurrects forgotten history.”—The Millions

The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago
Flint Taylor | Haymarket Books | 9781608468959 | March 2019
“A sad but necessary reminder of how citizens can be victimized by those who are supposed to protect them and how that abuse can poison entire neighborhoods. But it is also a story of a hard-won hope that resulted in some degree of justice for victims and an effort to remind children of what once happened in the hope that it won’t be repeated. The book is a chronicle of tenacity and hope alongside brutality and injustice, and in that way it is a profoundly Chicago story.” —Psychology Today

Song for the Unraveling of the World
Brian Evenson | Coffee House Press | 9781566895484 | June 2019
“[Y]ou will close the volume with the sense that Evenson has one more story to tell—the story of you, the reader, who will move on from reading even as strands of unraveling make it impossible to leave this book completely behind.”—Chicago Review of Books

All Its Charms 
Keetje Kuipers | BOA Editions | 9781942683766 | April 2019
All Its Charms is laced with both hopefulness and the prickling sting of thwarted desire. As Kuipers navigates this tension, she articulates the role of memory as a way to reconnect with meaningful records of the past, but also as a redundant link to painful experiences and people who have wronged us.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully
Karen Havelin | Dottir Press | 9781948340052 | May 2019
“By turns angry, consoling, and despondent, the book is a clear-eyed exploration of how women’s health issues are rarely taken seriously.”—The Paris Review

Vintage 1954
Antoine Laurain | Gallic Books | 9781910477670 | June 2019
“Such a great premise: A 2017 drinking party features a 1954 Beaujolais, which magically propels folks back to the Paris of the 1950s. Delightful to the last drop.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

The Library of Small Catastrophes
Alison Rollins | Copper Canyon Press | 9781556595394 | April 2019
“The range of Rollins’ poetic skill is remarkable. The result is a collection of poetry which is magnificently crafted, readable, and crucially important.”—New York Journal of Books

Socialist Realism
Trisha Low | Coffee House Press | 9781566895514 | August 2019
Socialist Realism might itself be a parable, in that it dares the reader to interpret it too literally—mistaking the showing of a wound for vulnerability, or uncertainty about political or artistic effects for a lack of commitment—but I count myself among the believers.”—Frieze Magazine

Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880-1940
Charlotte Vignon | GILES | 9781911282341 | June 2019
“Vignon, curator of decorative arts at the Frick, looks at how Duveen Brothers dominated the trade in European decorative arts and Chinese porcelain—and at the firm’s sometimes sharp practices.”—Apollo

When I Arrived at the Castle 
Emily Carroll | Koyama Press | 9781927668689 | April 2019
“Gothic fans rejoice, Emily Carroll has returned with yet another hauntingly stunning graphic novel, When I Arrived at the Castle. It’s the lesbian and vampiric erotic horror story you didn’t know you needed.”—Study Breaks

The Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants
Jon Steinman | New Society Publishers | 9780865719071 | May 2019
“I never thought a book about grocery stores could be so engaging, but Steinman held my attention from start to finish.”—Treehugger

Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC and Beyond, 1997–2017
Antonia Tricarico | Akashic Books | 9781617757198 | June 2019
“In the late 1990s in Washington, DC, a seminal era in underground music was born, and photographer Antonia Tricario was steeped in it. Tricario chronicled its musicians, women and men alike, with her powerful and evocative photos, which are collected here in Frame of Mind.”—Brooklyn Digest

Houston Noir
edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda | Akashic Books | 9781617757068 | May 2019
“With sprawl and serial killers, Houston Noir packs a mean punch. . . . [it] is a welcome addition to the city’s slowly filling bookcase.”—Texas Observer

Dance of the Jakaranda
Peter Kimani | Akashic Books | 9781617754968 | February 2017
“Kimani is the first African novelist to use historical fiction to claim Indian diasporic history and political belonging as one that is unquestionably Kenyan . . . Kimani’s most radical contribution in writing Dance of the Jakaranda has been his demonstration of how historians can recover this African South Asian identity. The constitutional recognition given to Indians fifty years after their deportation shifts popular discourse a hair’s breadth away from the politics of indigeneity, giving the South Asian diasporic archive a small but significant opening to locate a thick, albeit contested, history of belonging in its Kenyan homeland—a history, as Kimani reminds us, that is replete with contradictions and rumor.”—American Historical Review

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