A disjointed work that adds little to our understanding of the Regency period.
A pop-history look at England’s Regency era, a time period popular in the romance genre.
Koch is one of the owners of the Ripped Bodice, a Los Angeles–area bookstore “dedicated to romance.” In her debut book, the author examines the Regency (1811-1820), when George III’s illness rendered him unfit to rule and his son was installed as Prince Regent. After a cursory introduction to George III, Koch launches into stories of women who lived before, during, or after the Regency period. The author cannot explain the importance of the Regency period, however: “Ten short years in the grand scheme of history….What about the Regency continues to draw us in? I wish I had an answer (I would make millions of dollars).” Her lack of clarity about the Regency’s relevance makes the text rambling and unfocused. Koch organizes brief biographical sketches into chapters according to women’s relationships to men, to their interests, or to their own identities. Although the author notes that men controlled the historical narrative, she does little to examine how that negatively influenced the record of women in history. Much of the book features gossipy retellings of women’s lives during the period and how they were connected—or not. Several times, Koch cites fictionalized dialogue from films to support her claims. In a chapter on historical accuracy, Koch focuses on the lives of Mary Seacole and Dido Elizabeth Belle, two black women, to showcase the rich diversity present in London during the 19th century. However, the author inexplicably ends the chapter with the story of Princess Caraboo, a character created as an elaborate scam by a white woman named Mary Baker. Koch is unconvincing in her argument that Baker “shows us that everything we and her contemporaries think and thought about nineteenth-century women barely scratches the surface of the truth.”
A disjointed work that adds little to our understanding of the Regency period. (b/w illustrations)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-0101-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the...
A concise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”
In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1310-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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