Book reviews

Suzanne Franks has reservations about an impressive study of the ideals journalists should embrace

Angelia R. Wilson applauds a wide-ranging survey of American racism but remains unconvinced by the solutions on offer

Lennard Davis is impressed by a compendious account of all the ways the hearing world has tried to put Deaf people right

Mark Erickson applauds an analysis of where higher education in the US and beyond has gone wrong

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg has doubts about the wider applicability of the ideas of an innovative university president

David Gewanter suggests that time has not been kind to the works of the wild-living poets and novelists of the Beat generation

Andrew Blake enjoys a comprehensive account of ‘the most influential musicians of their generation’

Robert A. Segal questions the assumptions behind a wide-ranging survey of world religions

Ruby Guyatt regrets the lack of women in an elegant survey of a concept we seem not to be able to do without

Nathan Abrams is intrigued by the creepy possibilities film directors have found in refrigerators, typewriters and shower curtains

Clive Bloom finds the rap sheet on an iconic cultural figure frustratingly incomplete

Roberta Mock is intrigued by a radical account of the currents that have shaken her native city

A fascinating insider’s account of launching a tech start-up engages Martin De Saulles even if it does not quite cohere as an agenda for change

James Stevens Curl is delighted by a comprehensive study of an often underrated architectural era 

Chloe Chard considers the differences between ‘dreamers’ and ‘poets’ in the ways they portrayed human figures

Robert Eaglestone applauds a bold, although not wholly successful, attempt to reorientate our thinking in the wake of trauma

Jane O’Grady wishes this study of ideological inconsistencies had gone a bit deeper

Panikos Panayi enjoys an ambitious but partial study of London’s sleaziest district

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Kalwant Bhopal thinks that the authors of a new anti-racism toolkit need to go deeper

Emma Rees applauds a detailed analysis of how women are sidelined in the art world – and how they can fight back

The historian and author of The Politics of Humiliation discusses fairy tales and myths, the history of emotions, and the relationships between victim, perpetrators and onlookers

Kristen Ghodsee is intrigued by an ethnographic account of how women found ways to reinvent themselves after the collapse of the USSR

Tammy Lai-Ming Ho offers a local’s view of a well-contextualised look at the territory’s once-unthinkable pro-democracy demonstrations

Andrew Delatolla gets a clear overview of the Arab Spring’s effects on the relationships between government and society in the region

Tanja Sihvonen enjoys a collection of interviews with the queer game makers who are transforming the whole world of video games

Tony Mann is impressed by a study of what we mean by numbers that ranges across millennia

Kieran Williams is impressed by a dialogue about the history of a single country that offers a powerful defence of liberal, constitutional government

The author of The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach discusses seeing sport through ‘a feminist, anti-racist lens’, anti-doping efforts and Outback Noir

Our regular look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Catherine Rottenberg discovers how progressive causes can harness the power of ‘counter-data’ to challenge the status quo

Heike Bauer is intrigued by a study of women who lived as men that raises important questions about gender identities today

The historian and author of Information Hunters on the literary puzzles that inspired her historical sleuthing, the librarians and archivists whose work supported the Allies in wartime Europe, and the thorny issues around preserving documentation

Claire Horn applauds a study of artificial approaches to ‘family-making’ that does equal justice to both the science and social context

Lisa Hopkins considers how Tudor princesses severely limited their food intake as a way of asserting their status

James Stevens Curl considers the elusive notion of ‘grace’ and how it impregnated the art of the Renaissance and beyond

David Wheeler learns the lessons of a charismatic university president’s success

Suzanne Franks on what the decline of traditional media means for our ability to hold power to account

Gail Marshall considers a wide-ranging exploration of readers’ desire to find life lessons in books of many kinds

Simon Ditchfield is intrigued by a tale of gambling, conversion and betrayal in Renaissance Italy 

David Newman assesses a provocatively idealistic argument for rethinking our assumptions about national frontiers

Georgie Wemyss considers how the UK’s legislation about immigration is still entangled with its imperial history

Stephen Mumford puts his head to the business factors and fantasy finances at the heart of the beautiful game

Bryan Cheyette welcomes a comparative study of those persecuted under Stalin and Hitler despite its gaps

Jane O’Grady is intrigued by an analysis of the psychological depths plumbed by the fiction of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy 

Shane O’Mara considers the many different and always inadequate metaphors we have used to analyse our mental functioning 

Simon Young is not totally convinced by a wide-ranging account of the development of belief in witchcraft

Geoffrey Alderman is impressed by a study of the origins and development of a vile calumny against the Jews 

Rivka Isaacson is thrilled by the bold work produced at the frontiers between art and science

The professor of European history and author of Migrant City on first encountering English at school, studying London as an ethnic immigrant capital, and intersections of race and politics

Richard Joyner enjoys an account of a largely neglected phase in the life of the greatest modern physicist 

Andrew Palmer is unimpressed by a critic whose style falls far short of the writer he so admires

James Stevens Curl is thrilled by a guide to how we can recover the essential principles of creating liveable cities

Kathryn M. Rudy enjoys a useful summary of recent research on how the instruments of Christ’s Passion were displayed and venerated in the Middle Ages 

Charlotte Jones is fascinated by a bold attempt to link mathematical innovations with developments in Victorian fiction

Robert Eaglestone risks getting a bit ‘meta’ in reviewing a book about the failures of reviewers

Danny Dorling is impressed by an in-depth account that challenges much of the received wisdom (and stereotypes) about social housing

Nicholas Till enjoys a detailed analysis of the ‘phenomenal appeal’ of one of the great names in opera

Richard J. Williams praises a complex even-handed analysis of what has happened to our cities  

John Shand has mixed feelings about a book using horror film scenarios to teach moral philosophy