Linkblogging the new and reviewed in history and historical fiction this week:
History
Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, by David S. Brown, reviewed by Sam Tanenhaus. Hofstadter is best-known to generations of college students for his often-assigned work The American Political Tradition. Brown's biography delves much deeper, tracing Hofstadter's early trust in, and later disillusionment from, popular politics in history.
James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips, reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster. Science fiction has traditionally been a male-dominated field. Phillips's book follows a woman who decided the best way to break in was to publish as a man.
And Yardley's latest -- Jonathan Yardley takes on the slim memoir of George Appo, which gives a revealing look at post-Civil-War crime in New York City.
Historical Fiction
An Iliad, by Allesandro Baricco, reviewed by Nick Tosches. Baricco thinks that his "translation of a translation" would make postmodernism's granddaddy Borges proud. Tosches, with great regret, disagrees.
The Syringa Tree, by Pamela Gien, reviewed by Wendy Kann. Apartheid is now, thankfully, history. And Gien's novel apparently recasts To Kill a Mockingbird there.
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