Every week, our wonderful publicity team tracks the cross-platform media coverage our authors and their books receive. We’re proud to share our latest and greatest highlights below with links to where you can read more about these great titles!
The sun is shining and so are our books! Check out some of our titles and their brightest and newest media features below.
Music
Quantum Criminals was excerpted in Rolling Stone, a passage which RS titled, “Steely Dan Weren’t Hip-Hop, Even if ‘Everything About Them Was Hip-Hop.’” The book was also featured at The Atlantic, online and in their June ’23 issue, in a wonderfully titled piece: “Surrender to Steely Dan.” Jack Hamilton writes, “Pappademas offers a lively series of ruminations about individual songs, loosely pegged to the characters who populate those songs and who are rendered in playfully detailed and colorful portraits by LeMay. The result is both a celebration and an artifact of the current Steely Dan moment.” Hamilton goes on, “In sharp and funny chapters, Pappademas riffs on [Steely Dan’s] cast of characters in ways that capture the band’s cultural context and musical debts.” The book was featured in Josh Terry’s No Expectations Substack; Terry writes, “These song-based essays are part band biography, trenchant culture criticism, poignant ‘70s history, and psychedelic tone poems. Like Steely Dan’s tunes, they toe the line between an unbridled reverence for the music and esoteric sensibilities. I read it in a day and came out with an even deeper respect for their catalog.” Pappademas was also interviewed on Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan.
Quantum Criminals was featured in Rolling Stone again in an interview with Pappademas. Introducing the interview, Rob Sheffield writes, “Quantum Criminals is one of the sharpest, funniest, and best books ever about any rock artist.” Pappademas and LeMay were interviewed for a piece at NPR Music, included in their newsletter last weekend and published online later in the week. Marissa Lorusso writes, “[Quantum Criminals] uncovers the vast constellation of lyrical references, artistic influences and social and political contexts surrounding the band and its music.”
Dan Epstein reviewed the book for The Forward, describing it as being “[An] engaging and illuminating way to tell the band’s history” and going on, “Quantum Criminals is undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever read about this endearingly strange and endlessly fascinating band.” The two were interviewed on the Gaucho Amigos podcast. At the Southern Bookseller Review, Rosemary Pugliese from Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville writes, “With Quantum Criminals, Alex Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay provide cultural context, educated speculation, and bold visuals illuminating the wild rogues and rascals populating the band’s songs. From the famous (Mr. Lapage, Hoops McCann) to the lesser known (Snake Mary, Pixeleen), you’ll have more insight into their memorable cast,” concluding, “Quantum Criminals sure is a fun excursion into what may (or may not) have been in Donald Fagen’s and Walter Becker’s minds.” Finally, a feature on the book ran in the Norweigan magazine DN.
Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. Their reviewer calls the book, “A revealing reappraisal,” going on, “McCabe skillfully renders the artist’s rise and ahead-of-her-time activism against the sociopolitical landscape of the 1980s and ’90s, persuasively rescuing O’Connor’s reputation from a mainstream media narrative that ‘all too often dismissed [her] as a slow-motion train wreck.’ Fans will be riveted.” McCabe also contributed a book list to Shepherd of “The best books about music that put women center stage,” which began with her introducing her book.
Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters was also included among Tinnitist’s “Next Week in Music | May 8-14 • New Books.”
Maybe We’ll Make It was included on McCabe’s list at Shepherd. McCabe writes, “Price’s music is the soundtrack to her courageous story in progress. In the best possible way, this book reads like the liner notes: honest, heartfelt, and profound.”
Why Tammy Wynette Matters was reviewed at Americana UK. Rick Bayles writes, “Easton’s arguments are compelling…Reading Easton’s book you start to understand how Wynette may well have used the perceptions of her and her position as an icon of domestic femininity in a quite subversive way, and that she was far less of a victim than she herself often encouraged people to believe.” Bayles goes on, “Read this book; it’s unlike anything else you might have read about this artist and it will change your perception of who you think Tammy Wynette was.”
Why Tammy Wynette Matters was also included in a “Spring books round-up” at the Bay Area Reporter. Jim Piechota calls the book, “[An] exemplary deep-dive into the life of Tammy Wynette,” going on, “Country fans will be delighted with this short but incisive and fond remembrance.”
DJ Screw was included in a list at The Strategist of “The Best Books for Every Type of Dad,” the selection “For the dad who’s a hip-hop head.”
Bruce Adams, author of You’re with Stupid, was interviewed about his book at The Recoup. Introducing the interview, Joseph Kyle calls the book, “An amazing and insightful read into one of the more low-key scenes of [the 1990s].”
Kathy Valentine, author of All I Ever Wanted, was interviewed this week on the Texas Standard on her work this summer at the ZACH Theatre—“Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine celebrates the band’s music in a new way on stage.”
Go Ahead in the Rain was included in a list of “What books do Albuquerque influencers recommend?” at KRQE in (you guessed it) Albuquerque. Go Ahead in the Rain was recommended by author and poet Hakim Bellamy.
Black Studies
Teaching Black History to White People was the subject of a conversation at the Southern Literary Review. Introducing the conversation, Donna Meredith calls the book, “An important book that joins the ranks of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, Henry Lewis Gates’s Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, and James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me in assuring that all of American history is preserved and taught.”
Channeling Knowledges was included in the most recent list at the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education of “Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars.” Hey-Colón’s book was also highlighted at the New Books blog.
Selling Black Brazil was reviewed in the Hispanic American Historical Review. Gregg Bocketti writes, “[Romo] calls attention to the extent to which the story of tourism’s visual culture is not only a Brazilian story but an American one, and she makes occasional and evocative references to similar stories elsewhere, such as Peru and Mexico, where tourism imagery helped conflate each nation with its ‘native’ elements. In Selling Black Brazil, Romo has provided important touchstones for such comparative work. More important, she has deepened our knowledge of both the emergence of Brazilian tourism, which is still, surprisingly, very little studied, and the process of invention that transformed Salvador into Black Rome.”
Latin American Studies
The Rural State was reviewed at H-Environment. Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert writes, “The Rural State makes an important contribution to our understanding of the evolution and dynamics of rural statecraft (seen here as a knowledge-practice) in twentieth-century Peru. The long-term arc traced by the book, combined with the broad and finely interpreted source work, is the real strength of the book.” Studnicki-Gizbert goes on, “It will make profitable reading for historians of Peru and Latin America as well as scholars of peasants, indigenismo, and rural policies more broadly.”
A Century of Brazilian Documentary Film is reviewed in the forthcoming July ’23 issue of CHOICE. D. West writes, “With this volume, Sadlier…fills a gap in English-language scholarship on film by providing a clearly organized historical survey of documentary filmmaking in Brazil over the last hundred years,” going on, “Sadlier’s prose is eminently readable, and the scholarly apparatus is robust…Highly recommended.”
Oaxaca in Motion is also reviewed in the July ’23 issue of CHOICE, described by P.R. Sullivan as including “Cogent portraits of the individuals and families [Sandoval-Cervantes] followed in both the home community and their migrant settings in Mexico and the US…Recommended.”
History
Borderlands Curanderos was reviewed in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Jethro Hernández Berrones writes, “Borderland Curanderos is a healing intervention in the history medicine and public health in the U.S. borderlands, an antidote against the narratives of colonization, violence, and oppression usually found in the histories of biomedicalization. The uplifting case studies of these curanderos as well as the book’s fluid prose and captivating style make it suitable for undergraduate audiences. It is a great complementary reading for graduate students and historians interested in the history of public health in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. No reading list in borderland or Mexican-American history programs should miss this work.”
The Mexican American Experience in Texas was reviewed in the Journal of Arizona History. Michael Phillips calls the book, “A sweeping historical narrative of Mexican American history in the Lone Star State,” going on, “This lucid, ambitious work pays off for scholars interested in not just the history of Mexican Americans, but of southwestern border politics, civil rights, and of American conceptions of race.”
The Myth of the Amateur was also reviewed in the Journal of Arizona History. Brad Austin writes, “The Myth of the Amateur offers a detailed, provocative, forceful, and timely reminder that the debates that swirl around the ideals and conduct of college athletics today have an important history.”
Promiscuous Power was reviewed in the New Mexico Historical Review. Christopher Albi writes, “Nesvig has written one of the most compelling and entertaining accounts yet on the tumultuous first decades of Spanish rule in Mexico. He shows how self-serving rogues and ruffians grabbed power in Michoacán and then dictated to the royal government and Catholic Church their terms for accepting outside authority.”
Texas
The Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection was reviewed in Technical Communication. Amanda Horton writes, “The Rob Roy American Wood Type Collection is an extraordinary book that will be enjoyed by historians, design educators, and typophiles. The book is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in the collection but perhaps unable to make a trip to visit it. It is a beautiful book and not only is it a testament to the significance of Rob Roy Kelly’s work and to the significance of this important yet almost forgotten element of American history. As Shields reminds us, ‘The history of America…was printed in wood type.’”
Classics and Ancient World
Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices was reviewed in Woman’s Art Journal. Brigitte Keslinke writes, “Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices is an incredibly important and enlightening volume for which its editors and contributors should be commended,” going on, “Each chapter returns agency to one or another group of women in the Bay of Naples, and these re-centering efforts involve women of many more classes, statuses, and communities than is typical…The volume’s extensive bibliography, high production quality (including seventy-six figures and sixteen full-color plates), and relatively affordable price only enhance its utility and accessibility.”
__________________
Thank you for joining us on this journey! It’s been fun. We’ll see y’all very soon with another one.
