Book Review Archive

Starting in the fall of 2018, Information & Culture is once again including book reviews in the printed Journal, published three times a year. Returning to the print journal after years of only publishing book reviews online will draw more attention to and increase engagement with new scholarly works in the field of information studies and information history. New book reviews will be made available on the Information & Culture website until they appear in print, at which time they will only be available online through Project Muse. You can find links to the book reviews on Project Muse under Issues along with abstracts of our peer-reviewed articles. 

Book reviews that were published online only, between 2011 and 2018 are still available here, in the book review archive.

Book Reviews (Summer 2018)

Book Reviews (Spring 2018)

Book Reviews (Winter 2017)

Alberts, Gerard, and Ruth Oldenziel, eds., Hacking Europe: From Computer Cultures to Demoscenes. Reviewed by Thomas J. Misa, November 2015. 

Alkalimat, Abdul, and Kate Williams, Roots and Flowers: The Life and Work of Afro-Cuban Librarian Marta Terry González. Reviewed by Kam W. Teo, August 2015.

Andrew, Paige G., Moore, Susan M., and Larsgaard, Mary, RDA and Cartographic Resources. Reviewed by Francesco Gerali, October 2016.

Apple, Rima D., Gregory J. Downey, and Stephen L. Vaughn, editors, Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print . Reviewed by Thomas J. Misa, March 2013.

Apollon, Daniel, Bélisle, Claire, and Régnier, Phillipe, eds., Digital Critical Editions. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, January 2016.

Bagnall, Roger S., Everyday Writing in the Greco-Roman East. Reviewed by Thomas G. Palaima, September 6, 2011.

Baker, David, and Wendy Evans, eds. Trends, Discovery, and People in the Digital Age. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, November 2014.

Bann, Stephen, Art and the Early Photographic Album. Reviewed by Jeffrey Mifflin, 2012.

Basbanes, Nicholas A., On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III, January 2014.

Beredo, Cheryl. Import of the Archive: U.S. Colonial Rule of the Philippines and the Making of American Archival History. Reviewed by Bobby L. Smiley, March 2015.

Berger, Sidney E. Rare Books and Special Collections. Reviewed by Molly E. Dotson, November 2014.

Bivens-Tatum, Wayne, Libraries and the Enlightenment. Reviewed by Patrick M. Valentine, August 2012.

Blair, Amy L., Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States. Reviewed by Eric Novotny, September 2012.

Blair, Ann M., Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Reviewed by Matthew Z. Heintzelman, October 2013.

Blouin Jr., Francis X. and Rosenberg, William G., Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and Archives. Reviewed by Jeffrey Mifflin, September 6, 2011.

Blum, Rudolf, Translated by Hans H. Wellisch, Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography Reviewed by William F. Meehan III, February 16, 2012.

Bonansinga, Kate. Curating at the Edge: Artists Respond to the U.S./Mexico Border. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, April 2015.

Bordonaro, Karen. Internationalization and the North American University Library. Reviewed by Rush G. Miller, March 2015.

Brabazon, Tara. Digital Dieting: From Information Obesity to Intellectual Fitness. Reviewed by Joseph E. Straw, August 2015.

Bruce, Lorne D., Places to Grow: Public Libraries and Communities in Ontario 1930-2000. Reviewed by Peter F. McNally, September 6, 2011.

Brown-Syed, Christopher, Parents of Invention: The Development of Library Automation Systems in the Late 20th Century. Reviewed by Thomas J. Misa, September 2012.

Burke, Colin. Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss. Reviewed by Joseph E. Straw, April 2015.

Burns, Andrea A., From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement. Reviewed by Ethelene Whitmire, September 2014.

Cordón-Garcia, José-Antonio, Julío Alonso-Arévalo, Raquel Gómez-Díaz, and Daniel Linder, Social Reading: Platforms, Applications, Clouds and Tags. Reviewed by Paula L. Webb, September 2014.

Cortada, James, All the Facts: A History of Information in the United States since 1870. Reviewed by Edward A. Goedeken, October 2016.

Cronin, Blaise, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto, eds. Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact. Reviewed by Micah Vandegrift, March 2015.

Dackerman, Susan, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Reviewed by Jeffrey Mifflin, Septemeber 2012.

Dallasta, Federica, Eredità di Carta: Biblioteche private e circolazione libraria nella Parma farnesiana (1545-1731). Reviewed by Francesca Giannetti, February 16, 2012.

Daly, Christopher B., Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism. Reviewed by James W. Cortada, September 2012.

Dane, Joseph A., What Is a Book? The Study of Early Printed Books. Reviewed by Patrick M. Valentine, August 2012.

Davis, Caroline. Creating Postcolonial Literature: African Writers and British Publishers. Reviewed by Anthony Olden, November 2014.

Day, Ronald E., Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data. Reviewed by Thomas Dousa, October 2016.

Dick, Archie L., The Hidden History of South Africa's Book and Reading Cultures. Reviewed by Anthony Olden, October 2013.

Dyrbye, Martin, Mäkinnen, Ilka, Reimo, Tiu, and Torstensson, Magnus, Library Spirit in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Historical Perspectives. Reviewed by Hermina Anghelescu, May 19, 2011.

Eaton, Gale, The Education of Alice M. Jordan: Navigating a Career in Children's Librarianship. Reviewed by Ramirose Attebury, November 2015.

Edsel, Robert M., The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Reviewed by Cara M. Huweiler, May 19, 2011.

Edwards, Julie Biando and Edwards, Stephen P., Beyond Article 19: Libraries and Social and Cultural Rights. Reviewed by Dr. Brendan F. R. Edwards, September 6, 2011.

Eichhorn, Kate, The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Reviewed by Kate Collins, September 2014.

Emerson, Lori, Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound. Reviewed by Keith Swigger, February 2016.

Erekson, Keith A., Everybody’s History: Indiana’s Lincoln Inquiry and the Quest to Reclaim a President’s Past. Reviewed by Paula L. Webb, December 2012.

Ernst, Wolfgang, Digital Memory and the Archive. Reviewed by Peter Ward, March 2014.

Etherington, Don, Bookbinding and Conservation: A Sixty-Year Odyssey of Art and Craft. Reviewed by Roberta Pilette, May 19, 2011.

Feindel, William, Elizabeth Maloney, and Pamela Miller, Sir William Osler: The Man and His Books. Reviewed by Michael Bliss, September 2012.

Ferguson, James, John Alexander Ferguson: Preserving Our Past, Inspiring Our Future. Reviewed by Eileen Chanin, October 2012.

Fraser, Susan M., and Vanessa Bezemer Sellers, eds. Flora Illustrata: Great Works from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden. Reviewed by Robin Everly, March 2015.

Gleick, James, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. Reviewed by Christopher McDonald, May 19, 2011.

Gold, Matthew K., editor, Debates in the Digital Humanities. Reviewed by The Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, March 2013.

Gouriévidis, Laurence, The Dynamics of Heritage: History, Memory and the Highland Clearances. Reviewed by Jennifer K. Sheehan, June 2012.

Glynn, Tom, Reading Publics: New York City's Public Libraries, 1754-1911. Reviewed by Joyce Latham, October 2016.

Gracy, David B., The State Library and Archives of Texas: A History, 1835-1962. Reviewed by Peter Gottlieb, May 19, 2011.

Gregory, Ian, and Alistair Geddes. Toward Spatial Humanities: Historical GIS and Spatial History. Reviewed by Bobby L. Smiley, August 2015.

Hammer, Joshua, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscript. Reviewed by Joseph E. Straw, October 2016.

Hayles, N. Katherine, and Jessica Pressman. Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era. Reviewed by Bobby L. Smiley, November 2014.

Hedstrom, Matthew S., The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century. Reviewed by Peter Ward, October 2013.

Hidalgo, César, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies. Reviewed by Marc Kosciejew, May 2016.

Higgins, Hannah B., and Douglas Kahn, eds, Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundation of the Digital Arts. Reviewed by Salvador P. Barragan, January 2014.

Hinks, John and Day, Matthew, From Compositors to Collectors: Essays on Book-Trade History. Reviewed by Michael Laird, September 2012.

Hoelscher, Steven, ed. Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III, March 2015.

Houston, George W. Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity. Reviewed by David B. Levy, August 2015.

Hyder, Eileen. Reading Groups, Libraries and Social Inclusion: Experiences of Blind and Partially-Sighted People. Reviewed by Stacey Hathaway-Bell, August 2015.

Jackson, Andrew P., Julius Jefferson Jr. and Akilah S. Nosakhere, eds. The 21st-Century Black Librarian in America: Issues & Challenges. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, May 2014.

Jenkin, Elsenore Janis, Jean Primrose Whyte: A Professional Biography. Reviewed by Michael Dzanko, May 16, 2011.

Kennedy, Dan. The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age. Reviewed by Susan Keith, November 2014.

Kidd, Jenny, Museums in the New Mediascape: Transmedia, Participation, Ethics. Reviewed by Dr. Manas Dutta, February 2017.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing. Reviewed by Peter Ward, 2017 

Kline, Ronald R. The Cybernetics Moment, or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age. Reviewed by Benjamin Peters, August 2015.

Knight, Stan, Historical Types from Gutenberg to Ashendene. Reviewed by Peter F. McNally, January 2014.

Knott, Cheryl, Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow. Reviewed by Patrick M. Valentine, October 2016.

Knox, Emily J.M., Book Banning in 21st-Century America. Reviewed by David B. Levy, May 2016.

Koontz, Christie, and Lorri Mon. Marketing and Social Media: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Reviewed by Peter Ward, August 2015.

Korey, Marie Elena, 'A Long Way from the Armstrong Beer Parlour': A Life in Rare Books: Essays by Richard Landon. Reviewed by William F. Meehan III, May 2016.

Krajewski, Marcus,World Projects: Global Information Before World War I. Reviewed by Lawrence Frohman, October 2016.

Kramp, Robert Scott, The Great Depression: Its Impact on Forty-Six Large American Public Libraries. Reviewed by Arthur P. Young, May 19, 2011.

Kreneck, Thomas H. and Saxon, Gerald D., Collecting Texas: Essays on Texana Collectors and the Creation of Research Libraries. Reviewed by Thomas A. Bolze, May 16, 2011.

Kumbier, Alana. Ephemeral Material: Queering the Archive. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, August 2015.

Lang, Anouk, editor, From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Reviewed by James W. Cortada, March 2013.

Lyons, Martin and Jean-Yves Mollier, eds. Histoire et civilisation du livre: Pour une histoire transnationale du livre. Reviewed by Mary Niles Maack, May, 2014.

Mandelbrote, Giles and Taylor, Barry, Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library's Printed Collections. Reviewed by J. Greg Matthews, May 19, 2011.

Meyer, Eric T. and Ralph Schroeder, Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities. Reviewed by James W. Cortada, October, 2017

Miller, Bonnie M., From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Reviewed by Cecelia Bonnor, October 2013.

Miller, Bruce Joshua, ed. Curiosity's Cats: Writers on Research. Reviewed by Elizabeth Frengel, November 2014.

Misa, Thomas J., Digital State: The Story of Minnesota's Computing Industry. Reviewed by Paul E. Ceruzzi, May 2014.

Morishita, Masaaki, The Empty Museum: Western Cultures and the Artistic Field in Modern Japan. Reviewed by Andrew B. Wertheimer, September 2012.

Nelson, Adam R. and John L. Rudolph, editors, Education and the Culture of Print in Modern America. Reviewed by Thomas J. Misa, February 2013.

Nyburn, Anna, From Leipzig to London:The Life and Work of the Émigré Artist Hellmuth Weissenborn. Reviewed by Amy Andres, May 2014.

Osburn, Charles, The Western Devaluation of Knowledge. Reviewed by Peter Ward, April 2015.

Parada, Alejandro E., El Dédalo y su ovillo: ensayos sobre la palpitante cultura impresa en la Argentina. Reviewed by David Block, January 2014.

Parisian, Catherine M., The First White House Library: A History and Annotated Catalogue. Reviewed by Wade Garrison, May 19, 2011.

Pawley, Christine, Reading Places: Literacy, Democracy, and the Public Library in Cold War America. Reviewed by Wendy Korwin, May 19, 2011.

Pawley, Christine and Louise S. Robbins, eds., Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America. Reviewed by Edward A. Goedeken, March 2014.

Pearson, David, Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts. Reviewed by James W. Cortada, March 2014.

Piggott, Michael, Archives and Societal Provenance: Australian Essays. Reviewed by Morgan Gieringer, September 2014.

Prunckun, Hank, Scientific Methods of Inquiry for Intelligence Analysis, (Second Edition). Reviewed by Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi, PhD, February 2017.

Rayward, W. Boyd, ed. Information Beyond Borders: International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Époque. Reviewed by Joseph E. Straw, February 2016.

Rinehart, Richard and Jon Ippolito, Re-Collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory. Reviewed by Goldwynn Lewis, Febraury 2017.

Rouse, Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, Bound Fast With Letters: Medieval Writers, Readers, and Texts. Reviewed by Joseph Pucci, March 2014.

Roy, Loriene, Anjali Bhasin, and Sarah K. Arriaga, Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums: preserving our language, memory, and lifeways. Reviewed by Brendan F.R. Edwards, September 2012.

Rule, John C., and Ben S. Trotter, A World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State. Reviewed by Patrick M. Valentine, November 2015.

Russell, Andrew L., Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks. Reviewed by Stuart Shapiro, April 2015.

Schuette, Shirley and Sawyer, Nathania, From Carnegie to Cyberspace: 100 Years at the Central Arkansas Library System. Reviewed by Scott A. Curtis, May 16, 2011.

Sedo, DeNel Rehberg, Reading Communities from Salons to Cyberspace. Reviewed by Susan K. Burke., September 2012.

Sherman, Scott, Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library. Reviewed by Edward A. Goedeken, May 2016.

Silver, Joel, Dr. Rosenbach and Mr. Lilly: Book Collecting in a Golden Age. Reviewed by Jennifer Burek-Pierce, September 2012.

Simmons, Diedre, Keepers of the Record: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives. Reviewed by Ian Wilson, May 19, 2011.

Starosielski, Nicole. The Undersea Network. Reviewed by Stacy Wood, 2017.

Slayton, Rebecca, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012. Reviewed by Paul N. Edwards, September 2014.

Staikos, Konstantinos, The History of the Library in Western Civilization: From Petrarch to Michelangelo. Reviewed by Jennifer K. Sheehan, August 2012.

Stephens, Paul, The Poetics of Information Overload: From Gertrude Stein to Conceptual Writing. Reviewed by Robert Farrell, February 2016.

Suarez, Michael F., and S. J. and H. R. Woudhuysen. The Book: A Global History. Reviewed by Jennifer K. Sheehan, August 2015.

Swigger, Boyd Keith, The MLS Project: An Assessment after Sixty Years. Reviewed by Bernadette G. Callery, May 2011.

Tanselle, Thomas G., Other People's Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell. Reviewed by Michael Laird, September 2011.

Too, Yun Lee, The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World. Reviewed by Patrick Valentine, September 2011.

Valentine, Patrick M., A Social History of Books and Libraries from Cuneiform to Bytes. Reviewed by Cecilia Bonner, May 2014.

Wadsworth, Sarah and Wayne A. Weigand, Right Here I See My Own Books. Reviewed by Morgan Davis Gieringer, March 2013.

Whitmire, Ethelene. Regina Anderson Andrews: Harlem Renaissance Librarian. Reviewed by Kam W. Teo, March 2015.

Wiegand, Wayne A., Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland. Reviewed by Edward A. Goedeken, Septemebr 2012.

Wiegand, Wayne A., Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library. Reviewed by Patrick M. Valentine, May 2016.

Wilkie, Everett C., Lilly Texana: one hundred eighty broadsides and other ephemera relating to Texas printed and published in Mexico before 1849 in the Lilly Library of Indiana University. Reviewed by Ivey Glendon, September 2012.

Wosh, Peter J., Waldo Gifford Leland and the Origins of the American Archival Profession. Reviewed by Eleanor Dickson, August 2012.

Zanish-Belcher, Tanya and Anke Voss, Perspectives on Women's Archives. Reviewed by Wendy Korwin, September 2014.