Book Reviews

William Faulkner's Civil War cover image

“The Saddest Words”: William Faulkner’s Civil War

Michael Gorra. Liveright / W.W. Norton& Company, 2020. 433 pages. $29.95.

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Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

Natasha Trethewey. Ecco, 2020. 224 pages. $27.99.

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia

Christina Thompson. HarperCollins, 2019. 365 pages. $29.99.

Catastrophizing: Materialism and the Making of Disaster

Gerard Passannante. University of Chicago Press, 2019. 293 pages. $25.00.

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading

Leah Price. Basic Books, 2019. 214 pages. $28.00.

America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States

Erika Lee. Basic Books, 2019. 432 pages. $32.00.

In Faulkner’s Shadow: A Memoir

Lawrence Wells. University of Mississippi Press, 2020. 272 pages. $25.00.

Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America

Adam Cohen. Penguin Press, 2020. 448 pages. $30.00.

Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom

Sarah A. Seo. Harvard University Press, 2019. 339 pages. $28.95.

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What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Donovan Moore. Harvard University Press, 2020. 298 pages. $29.95.

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Making the Met: 1870-2020

Edited by Andrea Bayer with Laura D. Corey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020. 288 pages. $49.95.

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Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

Jane Alison. Catapult, 2019. 272 pages. $16.95 (paperback).