Reviews of the Month: January 2026

Spotlighting four book reviews for their relevance or pure reading pleasure

Posted on January 22, 2026 in Reviews of the Month

Moving forward, Review of the Week will be combined into one monthly round-up—the same topical and enlightening book reviews all in one post.

This month we start with Oxford’s Borders and Belonging, which examines immigration law, ultimately arguing for an overhaul of how we think about migration and immigration policy. Next, we look at the history of dissent in the United States in American Patriots. This book from New York University Press spotlights events from the Boston Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, asserting that dissent is a key part of American history and its political vision.

In honor of MLK Jr. Day this month, we picked Bloomsbury’s The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements. This “highly recommended” title discusses authoritarian pushback to human rights movements in the 1960s by drawing connections between how the FBI and the KGB targeted the Black Panthers and Soviet dissidents. We wrap up with Writing and Health Care: Creative and Critical Approaches. It’s cold. It’s dark. Can artistic expression help alleviate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) symptoms?

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Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy

Motomura, Hiroshi. Oxford, 2025
216p bibl index, 9780197743720 $34.95, 9780197743744

In this influential work, Motomura (UCLA School of Law), a leading scholar of immigration law, contends that traditional perspectives on immigration law are too limited and must be reexamined through a broader lens. Distinguishing itself from other contributions in the field, Borders and Belonging questions how immigration policy is formulated and examines which groups and constituents participate in these decisions. Motomura takes into consideration how history, national memory, and collective narratives shape immigration law. The author addresses important questions regarding the differential treatment of migrants and refugees, the civil rights of immigrants versus citizens, and the importance of taking the long-term view on immigration policy, one that extends beyond a focus on public opinion during election cycles. The text provides historical context for comprehending immigration and migration patterns, giving researchers a broader understanding of the issue and helping policy makers anticipate future trends. Overall, this well-researched and thought-provoking work skillfully blends a utopian view of migration while also acknowledging political realities and the divisive and controversial nature of immigration policy.

Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: L. Schmitz, University of Missouri St. Louis
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Law & Society, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Political Science – U.S. Politics
Choice Issue: Jan 2026

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American Patriots: A Short History of Dissent

Young, Ralph F. New York University, 2024
313p bibl index, 9781479826520 $29.95, 9781479826506 $29.95

As Young (Temple Univ.) writes, “true dissent is based upon expressing truth and exposing injustice” (p. 257). From Anne Hutchinson to Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Ayọ Tometi, dissent—demanding that the government live up to securing natural rights for all—has been baked into the nation’s DNA. It is distinct from insurrection and terrorism, though there are some instances of violence; during the 1773 Boston Tea Party, for example, the Sons of Liberty wounded a crewman as they threw chests of tea overboard. Young includes well-known events such as Occupy Wall Street, where for 59 days tens of thousands of protestors camped in Zuccotti Park to call attention to the widening wealth gap. Less well known, from 1997 to 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill lived high in a thousand-year-old redwood to protest Pacific Lumber Company’s plan to harvest it. After 738 days, the company pledged to let it stay. Not all dissent comes from the Left, but movements from the Right (e.g., the Tea Party, MAGA) are more likely interested in gains for the privileged few rather than broad-based reform. Thoroughly researched, American Patriots is essential reading to counter the distressing circulation of alternative facts and fake news.

Summing Up: Essential. All readers.
Reviewer: D. R. Jamieson, Ashland University
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – North America
Choice Issue: Sep 2025

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The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements

Roman, Meredith L. Bloomsbury Academic, 2025
232p bibl index, 9781350436138 $115.00, 9781350436145

In this masterful study, Roman (SUNY Brockport) examines methods used by the FBI and the KGB against radicals in the 1960s. Her work is a pithy and taut study of police methods that were adapted to respond to the tactics used by the Black Panthers and Soviet dissidents. Both groups sought to avoid provoking the authorities. Still, those in power continually changed the rules, particularly regarding peaceful protests and the use of informants, dividing both Panthers and dissidents alike. Nonviolent disobedience was criminalized. These police tactics represented the emerging carceral state. The USSR used labor camps and psychiatric wards to repress critics. The US utilized COINTELPRO and prisons. By slowly criminalizing nonviolence, the FBI created the chaos that allowed them to imprison Panther leaders and, in some cases, kill them, e.g., Fred Hampton in 1969. Added to that were the divide-and-conquer tactics that exploited fissures within the movements. In the US, the media aided the repression, and in the USSR, patriotic appeals linked the dissidents to foreign elements. This extraordinary work offers an interesting slant on radical movements in two different systems.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: D. R. Turner, Davis and Elkins College
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies
Choice Issue: Jan 2026

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Writing and Health Care: Creative and Critical Approaches

Adsit, Janelle. Bloomsbury, 2025
296p bibl index, 9781350417076 $100.00, 9781350417083 $34.56, 9781350417090

In her newest book, Adsit (California State Polytechnic Univ.), author of Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing (2017) and the editor of Critical Creative Writing (2017), explores the health benefits of artistic expression, with a firm grounding in current theories of narratology, creative therapies, and aesthetics. Whether working in a health-care setting or a college classroom, any instructor or student who is interested in creative writing as a means of cultivating greater health will appreciate this text. It includes accessible discussions about the epistemologies of illness and disease, the history of therapeutic arts, key concepts such as empathy and trauma, and related issues of disability and social justice. Adsit offers specific guidance in the chapters on craft and offers discussion questions, handouts, and exercises that will be immediately useful to the reader. Standing beside Demaine and Einstein’s Expressive Therapeutic Writing (2025) and Harris and Thompson’s Collaborative Writing and Psychotherapy (2023), this volume is very highly recommended.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.
Reviewer: G. Sikorski, Anne Arundel Community College
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Psychology
Choice Issue: Jan 2026

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