Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review: Gavin Weightman, The Industrial Revolutionaries

Posted on by Sean Redmond
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Weightman, Industrial RevolutionariesAs familiar as the outlines of the Industrial Revolution are, no one will be surprised to learn that every steam-powered invention has a murky history of rivalries, precedents, and counterclaims. However unsurprising it may be, it is still fun to learn that a century before Edison had his Tesla, Watt had his Trevithick. The more gripping tale that Gavin Weightman has to tell in Industrial Revolutionaries, though, is of the commercial cold war waged especially by England and France through and over iron and steam, with many sidewise glances toward America.

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Review: Garry Wills, Martial’s Epigrams

Posted on by Sean Redmond
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Gary Wills, Martial's EpigramsEven to those who know Roman poetry, Martial is more often known than read. This may be attributed, as you like, to the lightness of his over 1,500 epigrams, their sheerly daunting number, their honest filthiness, or the dependence for their effect on knowledge of the minute details of Roman culture. Trying to cut through this, Garry Wills presents Martial as the master formalist, honing the attack of his chosen genre the way a fencer perfects his pris de fer.

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Review: Ian Tattersall, The World from Beginnings to 4000 B.C.E.

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Ian Tattersall, The World from Beginnings to 4000 B.C.E.The hominid fossil record begins some seven million years ago with species that are like humans but not human. But on what basis do we identify members of our own family and say that they are not merely humanlike but human? Ian Tattersall makes it clear that we haven’t figured it out, and that this is what makes paleo-anthropology an interesting—and very human—endeavor.

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Review: Speke’s Journal

Posted on by Sean Redmond
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Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the NileJohn Hanning Speke’s career as an explorer began inauspiciously in 1855, when he and his commander, the swashbuckling Richard Burton, were nearly killed by marauders on the beaches of Somalia. Less than a decade later, and amidst a terrible public battle with Burton over the source of the Nile, Speke lay dead, the accidental or suicidal victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. However, for a few short years in between, he was held by most to be one of the greatest European explorers of Africa and one of the bravest sons of England.

Read the rest at The Journal of African Travel-Writing.

The Journal of African Travel-Writing, Number 3, September 1997 (pp. 87-91).