Editor’s Bookshelf

Love, marriage and literature

In Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage (University of Nevada Press, 2013), English professor and former director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies Susan Shillinglaw makes a compelling case for Carol Henning Steinbeck’s substantial influence on her husband’s work and in the process “changes how we think about what we already know,” according to The Steinbeck Review.  Library Journal recommended it as a “lively, absorbing biography.”

Loyal to Britain

In Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) Associate Professor Ruma Chopra, Department of History, collects arguments against the formation of the United States and the American Revolution by an array of colonists, slaves and Native Americans. An “insightful work” and “nuanced survey,” praised Choice Review. Chopra gave a talk about her book at  King Library in April as part of the University Scholar Series.

Honors for Milk and Filth

In her fourth collection of poetry, Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013), Carmen Giménez Smith, English ’94, “deploys physical—often violent—imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism,” noted Publishers Weekly. The collection was one of five poetry finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, which annually honors the best literature published in the United States and represents the only national literary awards chosen by critics.

The amazing Amy Tan

In The Valley of Amazement (Ecco, 2013), her first novel since 2005, Amy Tan, ’73 MA Linguistics, “once again explores the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters…tradition and new beginnings,” Publishers Weekly reported. The “scrupulously researched” (Los Angeles Times) 600-page novel features Violet Minturn, a virgin courtesan in Shanghai, her American mother and Violet’s child, Flora. The New York Times described the narrative as “heart-wrenching.”