Editors’ Picks for September 2023

10 reviews handpicked from the latest issue of Choice.

Posted on September 14, 2023 in Editors' Picks

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One gains a keen sense of the Socratic drive that characterized his philosophic life.

—P. N. Malcolmson, emeritus, St. Thomas University

Altini, Carlo. Philosophy as stranger wisdom: a Leo Strauss intellectual biography. SUNY Press, 2022. 248p bibl index ISBN 9781438490052, $95.00; ISBN 9781438490076 ebook, $32.95.

Altini (philosophy, Univ. of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) has artfully crafted an intellectual biography that avoids reducing its subject to a mere historical context. The personal aspects of Leo Strauss’s life are portrayed economically and only where they shed light on the development of his thinking. One gains a keen sense of the Socratic drive that characterized his philosophic life. The book’s seven chapters are organized in terms of Strauss’s life as a scholar and professor moving from one intellectual center to another: Berlin, Paris, London, New York, and finally settling at the University of Chicago. His forced exile from Germany led to his life as a “stranger” in a way that fits with Altini’s understanding of the philosopher as essentially “untimely,” always and everywhere a stranger. His Socratic wisdom is thus “stranger wisdom.” The chapters setting out Strauss’s early rediscovery of Platonic rationalism, the theological-political problem that became the central focus of his thinking, and his account of nihilism as the crisis of the West provide a valuable chronological map of Strauss’s political philosophy. Like any good map, it provides an excellent orientation and accurate directions but is useful only if one uses it to explore the city for oneself. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —P. N. Malcolmson, emeritus, St. Thomas University

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This highly readable narrative should alert general readers and undergraduates to be skeptical of McKinsey’s philosophy that the private sector can solve public problems, perhaps spurring searches for competing explanations and alternatives.

—A. B. Cochran, Agnes Scott College

Bogdanich, Walt. When McKinsey comes to town: the hidden influence of the world’s most powerful consulting firm, by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. Doubleday, 2022. 368p bibl index ISBN 9780385546232, $32.50; ISBN 9780385546249 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Bogdanich and Forsythe, investigative reporters for The New York Times, break through the secrecy sustaining the elite consulting firm McKinsey’s mystique to report in vivid and disturbing detail on its clients, advice, methods, organization, operations, and “culture.” In outstanding research reported through the lens of individual stories, they recount the myriad problems that undermine the company’s claims to be guided by ethics and values, including their dubious client selections, blatant conflicts of interests, hypocrisy, secrecy, revolving door relationships, suppressed dissent, and relentless focus on profit, often confusing cost-cutting with efficiency. Grounding abundant, revealing information in a critical yet restrained and balanced journalistic account of the company’s business, the authors leave theoretical analysis largely implicit. If Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist (CH, Oct’22, 60-0636) analyzes the micro-history of neoliberal economization in the public sphere, Bogdanich and Forsythe concretely describe how consultants such as McKinsey diffused economistic practices throughout the private and public sectors. This highly readable narrative should alert general readers and undergraduates to be skeptical of McKinsey’s philosophy that the private sector can solve public problems, perhaps spurring searches for competing explanations and alternatives. Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty, professionals, and general readers. —A. B. Cochran, Agnes Scott College

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The book’s rich primary source base comes from the departmental archives of Allier, the Archives nationales de France, and especially the Archives de Paris, where files on the investigation into Dormoy’s assassination remain interspersed with those on Pétain and La Cagoule.

—S. L. Harp, University of Akron

Brunelle, Gayle K. Assassination in Vichy: Marx Dormoy and the struggle for the soul of France, by Gayle K. Brunelle and Annette Finley-Croswhite. Toronto, 2020. 362p bibl index ISBN 9781487588373, $107.00; ISBN 9781487588366 pbk, $34.95; ISBN 9781487588380 ebook, $26.95.

This fascinating book re-creates the life, death, and legacy of Marx Dormoy. A prominent interwar socialist, Dormoy served as interior minister in the Popular Front government of Léon Blum and in 1937 dissolved La Cagoule, a right-wing group that threatened the existence of the Third Republic. Vichy Leader Philippe Pétain placed Dormoy under house arrest in Montélimar, where assassins financed by former members of La Cagoule killed him in 1941. Brunelle (emer., California State Univ., Fullerton) and Finley-Croswhite (Old Dominion Univ.) track not only Dormoy’s life but also the veritable civil war that seized France in the 1930s, the Vichy years, and France’s postwar struggle to accept the realities of collaboration. The authors convincingly argue that Dormoy is barely known today because unlike Jean Moulin, he died not at the hands of the Germans but of the French. Despite postwar assurances from Blum and others that the assassins would face justice, no one was ever charged with Dormoy’s death. The book’s rich primary source base comes from the departmental archives of Allier, the Archives nationales de France, and especially the Archives de Paris, where files on the investigation into Dormoy’s assassination remain interspersed with those on Pétain and La Cagoule. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. —S. L. Harp, University of Akron

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A thought-provoking and important work.

—C. J. Myers, formerly, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

Eisler, Matthew N. Age of auto electric: environment, energy, and the quest for the sustainable car. MIT, 2022. 378p bibl index ISBN 9780262544573 pbk, $55.00; ISBN 9780262372022 ebook, $55.00.

Eisler (Univ. of Strathclyde) offers a compelling, intricate, yet brief history of the whole electric automobile industry rather than profiling specific vehicles. For those who say “How hard can it be?” when confronting a situation such as conversion to electric vehicles, this volume provides a wonderful testament to how many variables, political conflicts, and unforeseeable consequences may be involved in making change. Eisler documents various iterations of the EV industry and what has affected its rise and fall—and rise again, with changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions being as important as advances in battery/energy storage. He points out several arguments that no longer work, e.g., EVs being only as green as the primary energy conversion system that supplies their power, or the thought that improving air quality in the US comes at the cost of exacerbating the air, water, and soil pollution of industrializing Asian countries. Eisler does such a complete job that the reader‘s most common response will be, e.g., “I didn’t think about that,” “I never considered battery replacement as an environmental issue,” or “I never thought that Nixon and California would have such an influence on my neighbor’s EV.” One-third of the text block is devoted to notes and an excellent index. A thought-provoking and important work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —C. J. Myers, formerly, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

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The careful scholarship throughout makes that perspective hard to reject.

—J. A. Stever, emeritus, University of Cincinnati

Frederking, Brian. Renegotiating the liberal order: evidence from the UN security council. L. Rienner, 2022. 203p bibl index ISBN 9781955055864, $95.00; ISBN 9781955055932 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Frederking (McKendree Univ.) makes a compelling case that single nations cannot solve sprawling problems such as terrorism, economic instability, and disease. Collective action is required. This occurs as nations give up some of their sovereignty and form what the author terms a “liberal order.” The book’s central question is whether the current liberal order is stable or in decline, because individual nations, for whatever reason, choose to go it alone. For answers, the author analyzes thousands of United Nations Security Council speeches and resolutions between 1990 and 2020. He concludes that the liberal order is more stable than critics assume. This book has a lot to like. Readers unfamiliar with international security and relations issues will appreciate the first three elegantly written chapters, which cover basic terms and issues. Advanced students and practitioners will learn much from the data and arguments in the middle and later chapters. The premise throughout is that the future of the planet is best assured by nations surrendering some of their sovereignty and cooperating with others to address the large problems of the era. The careful scholarship throughout makes that perspective hard to reject. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; practitioners; general readers. —J. A. Stever, emeritus, University of Cincinnati

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This book is worthy of a much longer review.

—D. Steeples, independent scholar

Goldberg, Dror. Easy money: American Puritans and the invention of modern currency. Chicago, 2023. 360p bibl index ISBN 9780226825106, $55.00; ISBN 9780226825113 ebook, $54.99.

Easy Money, grounded in a doctoral dissertation and nine publications, will become an instant classic. Lucid, arresting, and free of jargon, it is accessible to general readers and scholars. Goldberg (Open Univ., Israel) shows that barter is intrinsically limited in use because it depends on a “double coincidence of wants.” Money, in contrast, is a general medium of exchange and a store of value and can be a “medium of unilateral payment.” The story of modern legal tender currency began in Massachusetts between 1690 and 1692. Earlier, money had intrinsic value. Lacking sources of precious metal for coinage and facing a possible uprising of unpaid forces after a failed attack on French Canada, in 1690, Massachusetts authorities created and circulated paper currency legally bound to be accepted as payment for taxes. Thus validated, people in the money-short colony used it as face denominations in all kinds of transactions. In time, as global population and commerce outgrew precious metal production, legal tender paper currency redeemable only in other such currencies became the world’s norm. Easy Money falters only when its last chapter strays into biological and other analogies. This book is worthy of a much longer review. Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty and general readers. —D. Steeples, independent scholar

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Solidly researched and convincingly presented, this work also challenges non-Indigenous scholars to rethink their own assumptions about Indigenous economic renewal, resurgence, and sovereignty.

—S. Perreault, Red Deer Polytechnic

Jobin, Shalene Wuttunee. Upholding Indigenous economic relationships: Nehiyawak narratives. UBC Press, 2023. 255p bibl index ISBN 9780774865104, $89.95; ISBN 9780774865302 ebook, $34.95.

Jobin (Univ. of Alberta, Canada) offers a groundbreaking rethinking of what economic means in the context of nehiyawak ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐊᐧᐠ (Plains Cree) culture. She takes readers on a journey through her process of collecting information from Elders and from a variety of academic sources over a decade to cast a critical gaze on the orthodox dichotomy of capitalist economic development or preindustrial fatalism that so often traps the discourse around Indigenous economy and governance in a zero-sum game where only colonialism wins. The alternative that emerges is based on sound relationships rather than resource exploitation, along the nehiyawak principle of miyotpimâtisiwin ᒥᔪ ᐱᒫᑎᓯᐃᐧᐣ (the good life). This study focuses on one specific Indigenous culture, and the author invites other Indigenous groups to find their own culturally grounded ways of recovering the cultural grounds of their Indigenous political economy. This model offers a way out of economic assimilation through resource exploitation agreements, such as comprehensive land claims, so often made with colonial governments. Solidly researched and convincingly presented, this work also challenges non-Indigenous scholars to rethink their own assumptions about Indigenous economic renewal, resurgence, and sovereignty. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. —S. Perreault, Red Deer Polytechnic

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A thought-provoking, compelling, nuanced, and highly accessible reading for all levels.

—P. F. Rubio, North Carolina A&T State University

Jones, Brian. Tuskegee student uprising: a history. New York University, 2022. 264p bibl index ISBN 9781479809424, $30.00; ISBN 9781479809486 ebook, contact publisher for price.

The Tuskegee Student Uprising begins and ends with students shutting down Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute campus in 1968. Renamed Tuskegee University in 1984, the Institute was founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, an advocate of Black self-help and accommodation of white supremacy, who once told his students, “This is not a college” (p. 31). Jones (New York Public Library) offers the rich, long backstory of the student protests at Tuskegee dating back to 1896, and details a range of issues that exploded in 1968 at the height of the Black Power era. Jones bases his research solidly on archival collections and oral history interviews, and “builds on historical scholarship that emphasizes continuity between civil rights and Black Power” (p. 5). More than an institutional history, this book “illuminates the southern roots of the broader Black Power movement” (p. 2), which Jones argues “stood for an expansive conception of democracy” (p. 5) that ultimately helped provoke “a split among white southerners [and] cracked the ‘solid South’…” (p. 88). Tuskegee students were at the epicenter of local and statewide civil rights struggles and national student HBCU reform campaigns. A thought-provoking, compelling, nuanced, and highly accessible reading for all levels. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. —P. F. Rubio, North Carolina A&T State University

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This engaging book makes a convincing case for a ‘Greater Reconstruction’ that encompasses the US West and the borderlands, and makes insightful comparisons between similar processes of national consolidation in the US and Mexico (p. 3).

—J. M. Starling, University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley

Kiser, William S. Illusions of empire: the Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Pennsylvania, 2021 (c2022). 272p bibl index ISBN 9780812253511, $55.00; ISBN 9780812298147 ebook, $55.00.

Kiser (Texas A&M Univ., San Antonio) provides a succinct and engaging narrative of the complex relations between the US and Mexico during the Civil War and Reconstruction, when both nations experienced dramatic internal conflicts. He deftly navigates a complex web of diplomacy among warring parties in both nations, focusing on the importance of “Mexican regionalism in the course of hemispheric empire building” during this era (p. 3). Kiser devotes significant attention to France’s role and efforts to back an imperial regime in Mexico and manage relations with both the Confederacy and the Union. He also demonstrates the importance of Native American forces in conflicts during this period. Many elements in this book will be familiar to historians of the US-Mexico borderlands, but the author provides an engaging one-volume synthesis that enables readers who may be more familiar with US-centered histories of the 1860s to better appreciate the transnational dimensions of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This engaging book makes a convincing case for a “Greater Reconstruction” that encompasses the US West and the borderlands, and makes insightful comparisons between similar processes of national consolidation in the US and Mexico (p. 3). Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty. —J. M. Starling, University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.

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Ramsey’s account sheds light on both Maxwell-Roddey’s individual contributions and the history of the organizations of which she was a part.

—L. M. Puaca, Christopher Newport University

Ramsey, Sonya Y. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: a modern-day race woman and the power of Black leadership. University Press of Florida, 2022. 400p bibl index ISBN 9780813069326, $95.00; ISBN 9780813068695 pbk, $35.00; ISBN 9780813070100 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Weaving together US women’s history and African American history, Ramsey (history and women’s and gender studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte) examines the life and legacy of educator and activist Bertha Maxwell-Roddey, whom Ramsey terms “a modern-day race woman.” This political biography focuses largely on Maxwell-Roddey’s efforts to effect change on the local and national levels from the 1960s to the 1990s. Her key accomplishments include serving as a desegregation trailblazer in 1968 as one of first Black women principals at a predominantly white elementary school in Charlotte, NC; becoming the second full-time Black faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in 1970, where she also became the founding director of the university’s Black studies program the following year; helping to create, in 1974, what is now the Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte’s premier Black arts space; and founding the National Council for Black Studies in 1975. Ramsey also devotes attention to Maxwell-Roddey’s leadership in the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., which spanned decades and includes her service as national president. Ramsey’s account sheds light on both Maxwell-Roddey’s individual contributions and the history of the organizations of which she was a part. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —L. M. Puaca, Christopher Newport University

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