Reviews of the Month: June 2026

Spotlighting four book reviews for their relevance or pure reading pleasure

Posted on June 10, 2026 in Reviews of the Month

To kick off the month, our first selection is Bodies of Water from SUNY Press. In celebration of Pride Month, this pick examines queer aesthetics in Latin American films that take place in “watery spaces.” Next, we commemorate Black Music Month with American Rap Scenes from Bloomsbury Academic. Lavar Pope charts the evolution of rap and hip-hop music through 25 cities across the US, revealing how a locality’s history, communities, and politics impact music’s creation.

Who watched the Tony Awards? In honor of the 79th ceremony for excellence in live Broadway theatre, we highlight Shakespeare on the Radio: A Century of BBC Plays. This 2025 Edinburgh University Press title recounts the history of radio adaptations of Shakespeare plays, treating them “as texts in their own right, with their own performance traditions and technical practices.” Last, we say hello to summer and wave goodbye to spring with Reaktion Books’ The Beauty of the Flower. Underscoring the utility of botanical illustrations, this book, authored by Stephen A. Harris, charts how artists, scientists, and publishers have worked together for hundreds of years to accurately capture the details of plants.

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Bodies of Water: Queer Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

Maguire, Geoffrey. SUNY Press, 2024
214p bibl index, 9781438499178 $99.00, 9781438499185 $34.95, 9781438499192

In recent years, scholars have fruitfully explored the dynamic history, sociopolitical and cultural contexts, and aesthetics of international queer film. Now, in Bodies of Water, the British academic Maguire (Univ. of Cambridge, UK) offers a well-researched, clearly organized, and groundbreaking examination of queer aesthetics in selected recent Latin American fiction features and shorts—films whose settings portray queer characters interacting with others in “watery spaces,” such as swimming pools, showers, beaches, and rocky shorelines. His multidisciplinary approach draws on “the blue humanities, queer theory, and studies [of] cinematic embodiment and sexuality” (p. 2). Maguire’s book is the first to explore, in-depth, queerness and aquatic poetics. His theoretical influences include Water and Dreams (1942) by Gaston Bachelard and Cruising Utopia (CH, Jul’10, 47-6141) by José Esteban Muñoz. The five principal chapters of Maguire’s volume offer close readings of selected films and examine issues such as the “postpornogaphic” poetics of queer pleasure in Argentine Albertina Carri’s Las hijas del fuego (2018) and the “queer erotics of boredom” in Argentine Marco Berger’s Taekwondo (2016). This beautifully produced volume includes endnotes and an extensive bibliography of works in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty.
Reviewer: D. West, emeritus, University of Idaho
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Studies
Subject: Humanities – Performing Arts – Film
Choice Issue: Jun 2025

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American Rap Scenes: An Analysis of 25 Locations

Pope, Lavar. Bloomsbury Academic, 2025
320p bibl index, 9798765118931 $100.00, 9798765118962 $29.95, 9798765118948

Pope (Loyola Univ.) offers and explores data compiled about 25 rap scenes in America (including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands), treating “rap music as a product of physical location, migration, prior social movements, local musical traditions, and technological development” (p. 1). Pope’s in-depth treatment of rap considers how Black migratory patterns (particularly from West Africa) have had an impact not only on rap’s popularity in a scene but also on its texts. He addresses many overlooked aspects of local politics, the influences of the Black Arts Movement, and African American perspectives on identities in rap as intersectional music. This source would supplement a variety of American hip-hop studies, such as Wang’s Classical Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide (2003), Katz’s Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ (CH, Apr’13, 50-4351), and Abrams’s The Come Up (2022). In addition to snapshots of WAV files of quoted songs, this source includes playlists, tables, and illustrative figures. Highly recommended for scholars interested in ethnography and a sociopolitical approach to rap music.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.
Reviewer: M. Goldsmith, Westfield State University, Elms College, and Springfield College
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Latin American & Latina/o Studies
Subject: Humanities – Performing Arts – Music
Choice Issue: Mar 2026

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Shakespeare on the Radio: A Century of BBC Plays

Smith, Andrea. Edinburgh University Press, 2025
224p bibl index, 9781399547260 $115.00, 9781399547284 $19.95, 9781399547291

Smith (Univ. of Suffolk, England) offers a fascinating history in an underrepresented area of Shakespeare studies. Treating radio adaptations of Shakespeare as texts in their own right, with their own performance traditions and technical practices, this volume places (mostly BBC) radio adaptations in their historical and cultural contexts, in chronological order, organized in chapters of roughly 20-year spans from the origins of radio to the present. The introduction serves as a history of British radio engineering practice. Radio as a medium offers a fascinating way to consider Shakespeare’s language in performance, as the artists must convert any visual elements of performance to the purely aural, with all the challenges that entails. Smith’s chronicle demonstrates the significant role of Val Gielgud, brother to the more famous actor John, in shaping radio Shakespeare. One of the strengths of the volume is Smith’s detailed case studies of exemplary radio productions from each period, tracking changes in preferred plays, actor choices, and audience and critical responses. Perhaps the most surprising element: for much of the history of radio Shakespeare, men produced the shows, but in the 21st century, female producers dominate the form.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: K. J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University
Subject: Humanities – Performing Arts – Theater & Dance
Choice Issue: Dec 2025

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The Beauty of the Flower: The Art and Science of Botanical Illustration

Harris, Stephen A. Reaktion Books, 2023
336p bibl index, 9781789147803 $45.00, 9781789148022

The great strength of this book is the way in which it conveys an understanding of the scientific purposes of botanical illustration through historical narrative. Using many examples and historical narratives, Harris (plant sciences and curator of the herbarium at the University of Oxford, UK) helps readers see the importance of detailed illustration to endeavors in science and the important role the illustrations serve to preserve and record valuable interior and exterior anatomical and functional information visually. The author acknowledges that botanical illustration has the power to please the eye and adorn, but in this book he shifts focus to the scientific merits of this extremely useful art form. Harris never loses sight of the skill, talent, and technique botanical illustration artists possess, and the reader will gain an appreciation for the artist’s collaborative role in scientific progress, dissemination, and preservation. Including many examples, color plates, an appendix of plant names, extensive detailed references, and an enriching list of further reading, this title is a grand addition to the literature. It will be welcomed by those in the arts as well as the life sciences and by enthusiasts.

Summing Up: Essential. All readers.
Reviewer: J. C. Burns, Utah Tech University
Subject: Science & Technology – Biology – Botany
Choice Issue: May 2024

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