Books & Media Reviews

Food and Nutrition in Numbers

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Good Food: Grounded Practical Theory

ATLANTA — Emory University’s Jennifer Ayres knows good food. For her, it’s not just about the taste and presentation but rather the item’s history, how it was produced and distributed....

Reviewed By: the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church

Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs

If they knew him at all, the world knew Nigerian Oronto Douglas as the former attorney for the writer, playwright and Ogoni human rights activist Ken Saro Wiwa. Despite Oronto's and even President Bill Clinton's best effort, Ken was framed and hanged in 1995 together with 8 other Ogoni men who dared...

Reviewed By: Beverly Bell

Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain

“An overseas empire produces a vast sea of paper,” John Darwin writes. That sea — wide, deep and often treacherous — is what remains of the British Empire for historians to trawl, though few attempt to chart the whole of it in one relatively compact volume. Darwin managed something similar w...

Reviewed By: Alex von Tunzelmann

Detroit: An American Autopsy

Detroit is one of those taxing places that require you to have an opinion about them. This opinion expresses no mere preference. It amounts to a stance, from which may be inferred your electoral leanings, your racial politics, your union sympathies and the general sunniness of your disposition. The ...

Reviewed By: Paul Clemens

There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s distinguished Professor of Literature based in the United States, has recently published ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’, his war time memoirs and reflections on the process leading to Nigeria’s darkest page in history and its outcome. The 333-pag...

Reviewed By: Tarila Marclint Ebiede

Fire in the Ashes: 25 Years Among the Poorest Children in America

It’s a topic that is more timely than ever. More Americans are wrestling with the challenges of poverty in the wake of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis, both of which hit families of color particularly hard. The gaping disparities between children of different racial and socioeconomi...

Reviewed By: Wendy Kopp

HBO documentary about Sergio Viera de Mello airs May 2010, beginning May 6

September 7, 2012 This month, beginning May 6, HBO television will premiere its riveting documentary “Sergio” based on the book “Chasing the Flame” by Samantha Power about the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. The film includes notable interviews from refugee and aid exp...

Reviewed By: Steve Hansch

The Price of Inequality

Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book, “The Price of Inequality,” is the single most comprehensive counter­argument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories. While credible economists running the gamut from center right to center left describe our bleak present as the re...

Reviewed By: Thomaas B. Edsall

The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at all Costs

Last year a Newsweek article made public President Obama’s reading list. Its message was promising: A third of the books focused on former presidencies. Yet according to “The Emergency State,” David C. Unger’s ambitious and valuable overview of 20th-century presidents and national security, ...

Reviewed By: Karen J. Greenberg