Editors’ Picks for April 2026

10 reviews handpicked from the latest issue of Choice

Posted on April 20, 2026 in Editors' Picks

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This is a welcome addition to the meager research on people living outdoors, including underground.

—I. Glasser, Brown University

Williams, Terry. Life underground: encounters with people below the streets of New York. Columbia, 2024. 320p bibl index ISBN 9780231177924, $120.00; ISBN 9780231177931 pbk, $30.00; ISBN 9780231556941 ebook, $29.99.

Life Underground is a meditation on Williams’s 30 years of ethnographic field work in the train tunnels under New York City. He reflects on the many observations and interviews he conducted with the (mostly) men living underground, tying the narrative to what was happening above ground in New York City during the decades of his research. He also considers the potential impact of his own presence on the life of this community. Williams (New School for Social Research) calls his work an ethnographic collage as he pieces together the lives of people living in cobbled-together spaces underground. The collage is based on his observations and interviews, and especially the writings community members shared with him (he gave them notebooks to record their thoughts). Readers are introduced to six men and two women whose stories are presented throughout the book, alongside observations of scores of other people, whom Williams was able to interview both underground and above ground, where he documented their efforts to make a living through various methods. Life Underground is enlivened with photographs and drawings of community life, and a wonderful history of the Hudson River, which runs parallel to the underground tunnels. This is a welcome addition to the meager research on people living outdoors, including underground. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —I. Glasser, Brown University

An absolute must read for anyone serious about reducing gun violence.

—R. E. Osborne, Texas State University

Hyde, Janet Shibley. The psychology of gun violence: how smart choices can save lives. Prometheus Books, 2025. 242p bibl index ISBN 9781493089970, $29.95; ISBN 9781493089987 ebook, $28.50.

Hyde (emer., Univ. of Wisconsin) has written a remarkable book. It is not remarkable because it illuminates the “gun culture” in the United States. Plenty have made that effort. It is not remarkable because it pulls from popular culture to make the point that gun violence is increasing in the United States. Others have made that case as well. Her work is remarkable because it is optimistic about gun culture—optimistic in the sense that the country’s culture can be changed. As she writes, “The second amendment does not doom us” (p. 33). There is such power in recognizing how this unhealthy culture—like the culture that fostered smoking in the 1950s—can be changed without banning, eliminating, or demonizing guns. Smoking was, ultimately, reduced when the emphasis was placed on the health-related reasons to quit rather than attempting to ban or eliminate cigarettes or demonize those who smoke. An absolute must read for anyone serious about reducing gun violence. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels, but especially faculty, researchers, and professionals. —R. E. Osborne, Texas State University

With contributions from law professors, political scientists, and philosophers, this volume is a vital addition to the literature on free expression.

—S. B. Lichtman, Shippensburg University

Free speech and incitement in the twenty-first century, ed. by Eric T. Kasper and JoAnne Sweeny. SUNY Press, 2025. 274p index ISBN 9798855802023, $120.00; ISBN 9798855802030 pbk, $35.95; ISBN 9798855802047 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This compilation of essays analyzes the contemporary relevance of one of the most important free speech precedents in American constitutional law. In 1969, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the United States Supreme Court transformed its approach to the freedom of expression, crafting a new standard that held that the government can only ban speech that is directed at inciting imminent criminal activity or is likely to produce such activity. Following an initial observation that the Brandenburg test is the most protective free speech standard in the world, the first section of essays analyzes the test’s theoretical framework, which emerged after decades of false starts. The second section of essays explores how the test applies in specific contexts, including musical expression, speech by prisoners, and speech linked to terrorism. A final section discusses the standard’s vitality in the 21st century amid the need to reconcile free speech with the internet, and the challenges to free speech posed by an increasingly pugnacious federal government bent on punishing its critics. With contributions from law professors, political scientists, and philosophers, this volume is a vital addition to the literature on free expression. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —S. B. Lichtman, Shippensburg University

The research is commendable, and the contributing authors demonstrate a persistent and creative approach to locating primary materials and empirical evidence that many believed impossible to find.

—L. De Danaan, emeritus, Evergreen State College

A People destroyed: new research on the Roma genocide, 1941–1945, ed. by Anton Weiss-Wendt. Nebraska, 2025. 350p bibl index ISBN 9781496234537, $70.00; ISBN 9781496243720 ebook, $70.00.

This collection incorporates the most recent scholarship on the Roma genocide during 1941–45. Some essays detail the ordeals of victims in specific cities or regions, while others report on studies of particular camps or even individual victims. The research is commendable, and the contributing authors demonstrate a persistent and creative approach to locating primary materials and empirical evidence that many believed impossible to find. This work represents decades of research and enables scholars to assess “the scope and the geography of mass murder.” Not only have the scholars documented the number of victims, but they can actually account for about two-thirds of them by name. It is certain, Weiss-Wendt (Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies) concludes, “beyond a reasonable doubt, [that] the Nazi regime in Germany and the fascist regime in Croatia had pursued annihilation of the Roma.” According to Weiss-Wendt, in relative terms fewer Roma perished elsewhere during the Nazi era, yet without the policies set in motion by the Third Reich, mass violence against the Roma would be unimaginable. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; general readers. —L. De Danaan, emeritus, Evergreen State College

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Its entertaining and enlightening narrative of the past will speak to undergraduates and general readers as well as professionals and activists reflecting on the perplexing present.

—A. B. Cochran, emeritus, Agnes Scott College

Witt, John Fabian. The radical fund: how a band of visionaries and a million dollars upended America. Simon & Schuster, 2025. 712p index ISBN 9781476765877, $35.00; ISBN 9781476766355 ebook, $16.99.

Witt (law, Yale Univ.) writes this history with the present in mind, not projecting present perspectives onto the past, but providing historical materials for contemplating current issues. Funded by the renounced inheritance of an eccentric heir, the largely forgotten Garland Fund brought together a wide spectrum of liberal-left leaders in the interwar years who granted modest support to an eclectic variety of projects, mostly focused on racial equality, civil liberties, and labor advancement. Despite missteps, the resulting impacts were often disproportionate to the Fund’s limited resources, and its experiments touch key themes that define the dilemmas of social change. Unlike the negative lessons of billionaires’ largess that Anand Giridharandas warns about in Winners Take All (CH, Feb’19, 56-2439), these projects provide positive guidance on fruitfully combining idealistic goals and practical means, movements and institutions, and race and class reform initiatives. Moreover, the book details stories of dramatic events and profiles of little-remembered activists, such as James Weldon Johnson and Sydney Hillman, from this time of epochal change and conflict. Its entertaining and enlightening narrative of the past will speak to undergraduates and general readers as well as professionals and activists reflecting on the perplexing present. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —A. B. Cochran, emeritus, Agnes Scott College

A concluding chapter offers an honest assessment of the current struggle to maintain real science, opting for both urgency and agency, and presents a workable political blueprint for change.

—R. T. Ingoglia, St. Thomas Aquinas College

Mann, Michael E. Science under siege: how to fight the five most powerful forces that threaten our world, by Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez. PublicAffairs, 2025. 349p index ISBN 9781541705494, $32.00; ISBN 9781541705517 ebook, $18.99.

Mann (Univ. of Pennsylvania) and Hotez (Baylor College of Medicine) are two of America’s most well-respected scientists and public advocates in geophysics/climatology and biochemistry/pediatrics, respectively. Here, they dissect the current attack on science and explain how to counter it. The book devotes a chapter to each of five principal supporters of anti-science: plutocrats, petrostates, professional spreaders of disinformation, propagandists, and the press. The authors carefully document the speeches, podcasts, tweets, interviews, and writings of those who purposely mislead the public and ultimately attempt to derail a reasoned governmental response to global warming and pandemics. Step by step, they demolish the veracity of these arguments and explore the motivations behind such claims. What is fascinating is how the anti–global warming arguments and tactics propounded by petrostates (e.g., Russia) mirror those denying the efficacy of vaccinations. Sadly, as is made clear, the mainstream press often presents a “false balance” on issues (e.g., the origins of COVID-19) for which there is a solid, scientific consensus, thereby valorizing anti-science conspiracy theories. A concluding chapter offers an honest assessment of the current struggle to maintain real science, opting for both urgency and agency, and presents a workable political blueprint for change. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —R. T. Ingoglia, St. Thomas Aquinas College

Maimonides teaches us to think like Aristotle while being critical of him.

—C. A. Colmo, emeritus, Dominican University emeritus

Parens, Joshua. Maimonides’s “Guide” on obstacles to knowledge, being, and action. Mercer University, 2025. 309p bibl index ISBN 9780881469639, $30.00.

Every line in Parens’s dialogic encounter between the God of revelation and the God of philosophy is alive with rigorous and engaging insight. His erudite challenge to the contemporary literature on the 12th-century genius and polymath Maimonides and his Guide of the Perplexed will richly reward specialists in the field while presenting only a minor obstacle to general readers, who will be attracted by the lively discussion of the great themes of prophecy, providence, and creation. Does Aristotle’s God speak to the philosopher in the same way that God wills his revelation to a prophet? Why is there evil or privation? And why did the eternal God decide to create a world in time? Maimonides teaches us to think like Aristotle while being critical of him. Are these criticisms of Aristotle Maimonides’s last word? Parens (Univ. of Dallas) demonstrates how the seeming criticisms of Aristotle are useful in defending revelation and the law while still allowing Maimonides to provide a subtle and powerful defense of both philosophy and Aristotle. Parens himself invites comparison of his volume with Josef Stern’s The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (CH, Feb’14, 51-3198), and curious readers might see a useful contrast with Parens’s first book, Metaphysics as Rhetoric (1995). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; general readers. —C. A. Colmo, emeritus, Dominican University emeritus

Belonging to the recent literature on transatlantic trade, slavery, and social stratification, Opacity illuminates the conventional approaches of artists to these subjects.

—A. Golahny, emerita, Lycoming College Emerita; Boston College

Vanhaelen, Angela. Opacity: Blackness and the art of the Dutch Republic. Pennsylvania State, 2025. 204p bibl index ISBN 9780271099965, $94.95.

Proceeding from Vermeer’s women in private, domestic tranquility to enslaved laborers on brutal Brazilian plantations, Vanhaelen (McGill Univ., Canada) vividly examines aspects of Dutch society at home and abroad. Vermeer’s women, in elegant rooms adorned with seascapes, are reading letters, presumably sent from lovers or husbands absent at sea and thus connected to maritime trade. Merchants overseas wrote to their wives in Holland, even as they may have had a second family with a local woman. Considering firsthand accounts and portrayals of Africans in Dutch Brazil, Vanhaelen examines the living conditions of the WIC soldiers, the Dutch governing officials, the enslaved laborers, and the escapees in their own isolated settlements. Familiar as well as unfamiliar imagery demonstrates how Africans were generally silent nonentities within the Dutch culture that displayed paintings of them. One theme is sexuality, the hidden eroticism of Vermeer’s women in contrast to the overt lascivious immorality of Dutch men toward Africans in Elmina. Another is the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church and its antipathy toward Roman Catholicism, which played out in the colonies. Belonging to the recent literature on transatlantic trade, slavery, and social stratification, Opacity illuminates the conventional approaches of artists to these subjects. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —A. Golahny, emerita, Lycoming College Emerita; Boston College

Ripollés’s decision to categorize her as the inventor of the Portuguese Baroque—an extraordinary claim, as no other woman artist has been credited with inventing a particular style or within a geographical area.

—D. Apostolos-Cappadona, emerita, Georgetown University

Ripollés, Carmen. Josefa de Óbidos. Getty Publications, Lund Humphries, 2025. 160p index ISBN 9781606069851, $45.00.

Although well known among the scholars of the Portuguese Baroque, Josefa de Óbidos (c. 1630–1684) has remained an enigma within the larger spectrum of women artists. Carmen Ripollés’s beautifully illustrated monograph offers a historical and cultural biography of this artist by examining her place within the broader contexts of early modern Portugal and other early modern female practitioners, including Artemisia Gentileschi and Luisa Roldán. Josefa’s professional and financial success as an artist of sacred and secular works supports Ripollés’s decision to categorize her as the inventor of the Portuguese Baroque—an extraordinary claim, as no other woman artist has been credited with inventing a particular style or within a geographical area. While Josefa learned her craft from her father and within his workshop, she expanded the more traditional boundaries of her female contemporaries by never marrying or joining a religious order. Her creative and personal independence was signified by her legal status as a donzela emancipada (emancipated maiden). Ripollés (Portland State Univ.) dispels the mythography of Josefa as a religious recluse while emphasizing that her career defied the traditional pattern of gender conventions for a woman artist and entrepreneur, which fits well into the “Illuminating Women Artists” series. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —D. Apostolos-Cappadona, emerita, Georgetown University

These contributions are complemented by explorations of individuals and movements that have, until now, remained just outside the lens of scholarly examination.

—D. Burgess, University of Cincinnati – Clermont College

Reformation movements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ed. by Charlotte Methuen, Gury Schneider-Ludorff, and Lothar Vogel. SBL Press, 2025. 472p bibl index ISBN 9781628376395, $98.00; ISBN 9781589835788 pbk, $78.00; ISBN 9781628376401 ebook, $78.00.

With this latest addition to The Bible and Women: An Encyclopedia of Exegesis and Cultural History, the authors and editors have produced a worthy collection of new scholarship that illuminates the contributions of women to the broader religious experience during and after the Protestant Reformation. Nineteen essays from preeminent scholars in the field, as well as a few lesser-known yet no less accomplished essayists, provide nuanced insights into familiar subjects such as Marguerite of Navarre, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Argula von Grumbach. These contributions are complemented by explorations of individuals and movements that have, until now, remained just outside the lens of scholarly examination. The piety of Elisabeth Pedersdatter, for example, is uncovered in the words written on the occasion of her death in 1578 at the age of 31. In addition, the recent increased interest in the contributions of 16th-century Italian noblewoman and poet Vittoria Colonna is brought full circle with an exploration of her deeply reverential sonnets devoted to Mary Magdalene, especially in the years following the death of her beloved husband. Reformation Movements in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries is rich in completely fresh contributions and deeper explorations of familiar subjects, making it a worthy addition to scholarship on the Reformation era. Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. —D. Burgess, University of Cincinnati – Clermont College

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