Reviews of the Month: February 2026

Spotlighting four book reviews for their relevance or pure reading pleasure

Posted on February 17, 2026 in Reviews of the Month

We’re kicking off this month’s collection of reviews with Stomp off, Let’s Go to commemorate the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. An assessment of the early years of Louis Armstrong, the book follows the jazz legend’s music career and personal life. Next up, who watched the Superbowl? Oxford’s Fanatic: Why We Love the Things We Love applies a psychological approach to fanaticism to unpack the positive and negative implications of being a devoted fan.

In celebration of the new “Wuthering Heights” film and/or Valentine’s Day (depending on your interpretation of the book), we spotlight Harvard’s The Annotated Wuthering Heights, released in 2014. Illustrations, maps, and further reading help break down this enduring gothic tale. To wrap up the month, we look at California’s Building the Black City in honor of Black History Month. Joe William Trotter traces how Black Americans created urban neighborhoods through schools, businesses, community-building, and organizing.

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Stomp off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong

Riccardi, Ricky. Oxford, 2025
466p index, 9780197614488 $34.99

Riccardi’s critically acclaimed first two volumes about Armstrong made the case for restoring the reputation of Armstrong’s middle career (Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong) and later career (What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong), which have often been denigrated in the jazz community for their concessions to popular tastes and their lack of the innovation of his early years. Having strongly made that case, Riccardi now accesses tremendous but previously unavailable resources at the Armstrong House Museum (where Riccardi is Director of Research Collections) and elsewhere to reexamine Armstrong’s early life and career. There is much less disagreement about his music from the 1920s, widely acknowledged as some of the most influential in the history of jazz and popular music. Other studies offer more detailed descriptions of the music, but Riccardi’s observations are clear and trenchant. He sheds new light on Armstrong’s challenging youth in New Orleans and subsequent personal life, while clearing up numerous long-standing anomalies and controversies. Very strongly recommended as the new standard of research on early Armstrong.

Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.
Reviewer: K. R. Dietrich, emeritus, Ripon College
Subject: Humanities – Performing Arts – Music
Choice Issue: Feb 2026

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Fanatic: Why We Love the Things We Love

Ungemah, Joe. Oxford, 2024
240p bibl index, 9780197783863 $34.95, 9780197783887

Every reader likely knows someone whom they believe fits the definition of “fanatic.” Some may strike the person as cute—a die-hard fan for a particular team—while others likely come across as dangerously committed to a cause. Ungemah’s book has powerful applications for understanding social issues when that fanaticism crosses into the realm of hatred and hate-based actions. Breaking the elements of fanaticism down into the physical, cognitive, social, and emotive elements is crucial for understanding the breadth and depth of this kind of “devotion.” Although it may seem counterintuitive, Ungemah also points out the benefits that fanaticism can provide—a sense of identity being only one of the powerful ones. By addressing the elements and the potential positive reasons that one might become fanatical, the work provides valuable insight into how to foster the positive aspects of such devotion while, potentially, reducing the negative aspects. This is important reading for anyone interested in understanding the depths of such devotion and the myriad ways in which that devotion “feeds” the individual experiencing it.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: R. E. Osborne, Texas State University
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Psychology
Choice Issue: Jun 2025

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The Annotated Wuthering Heights

Brontë, Emily. ed. by Janet Gezari Belknap, Harvard, 2014
454p bibl afp, 9780674724693 $35.00

An enduringly popular novel, Wuthering Heights (1847) has variously been cited as erotic, evil, mythical, realistic, and/or moral. This wonderfully printed annotated edition provides fascinating illustrations and a useful introduction. Gezari (Connecticut College) retains Brontë’s original two-volume, 20-chapter structure, and her annotations fill in countless gaps that few could have known existed. Included are genealogy, maps, photographs, and textual notes galore. For ease of reading, Brontë’s text is printed on the left side of each page with supporting editorial materials appearing on the right. Annotations are factual, providing many contexts—such as history, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and linguistics—and elucidating literary allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, folklore, and so on. In the introduction, Gezari explains her plan and indebtedness to earlier work on Brontë, including Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), Terry Eagleton’s Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës (CH, Oct’75), and Winifred Gerin’s Emily Brontë: A Biography (CH, Oct’72). The volume’s “Further Reading” lists primary sources, biographical and critical books, and essays. Wuthering Heights has never been so usefully packaged for readers. An important edition of a work by an important Victorian novelist.

Summing Up: Essential. All readers.
Reviewer: S. A. Parker, Hiram College
Subject: Humanities – Language & Literature – English & American
Choice Issue: Mar 2015

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Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life

Trotter, Joe William. California, 2024
304p bibl index, 9780520344419 $27.95, 9780520975514 $27.95

Trotter (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) has written frequently on Black history, including in his previous books Workers on Arrival (CH, Jun’19, 56-4028) and River Jordan (CH, Jul’98, 35-6435). Here, he traces the emergence of African Americans building urban neighborhoods, essentially cities within cities, considering both the physical city and its social organizations and networks from the colonial period to the present. These efforts demonstrated Black people’s hard work, creativity, ingenuity, and resilience in the face of the oppositional forces of slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent white racism and violence. Black urbanites purchased land; built homes; founded churches, schools, businesses, and fraternal and self-help organizations; and organized the Black Freedom Movement to overcome those forces. Trotter divides his study chronologically and geographically into two sections covering the urban South, Southeast, and Southwest and the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West, respectively. He then traces Black city-building in 24 cities, demonstrating the uniqueness of each and their continuities. Interwoven with this narrative, Trotter links historical evidence to support reparations due to generations of racial injustice. Based on secondary sources, the breadth and depth of which demonstrate the field’s maturity, this book is a tour de force that provides a new major synthesis of Black urban history.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: J. Borchert, emeritus, Cleveland State University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Urban Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – North America
Choice Issue: May 2025

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