Short Takes: Unusual in its depth and breadth

Booklist reviews Mark Hersey's new environmental biography of George Washington Carver, MY WORK IS THAT OF CONSERVATION: "Because of Carver’s close associations with poor black tenant farmers, his work and research reveal as much about their lives and struggles in a deeply racist agricultural system as they do about his vision of land conservation and his contributions to the broad context of the ecology movement."

Michael Crutcher's TREME in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and on WWNO's "The Sound of Books".

Allen Tullos on WBHM's Tapestry; also interviewed by Barbara Dooley about ALABAMA GETAWAY

Two works exploring the impact of Agent Orange, THE INVENTION OF ECOCIDE and FAMILY OF FALLEN LEAVES, reviewed together in Asia Times by Nick Turse.

Congratulations to Diane Mutti Burke, whose book ON SLAVERY'S BORDER -- the inaugural title in our Early American Places series -- is the winner of The Missouri Conference on History Book Award, given for the best history book written by a resident of Missouri.

The new American Historical Review includes reviews of MAKING CATFISH BAIT OUT OF GOVERNMENT BOYS ("This is a superb book...Unusual in its depth and breadth of research"), IN SEARCH OF BRIGHTEST AFRICA ("A novel discussion of representations of Africa in the early twentieth century...[a] very good work of cultural history"), and ACADEMIC LIVES ("a richly contextualized, if occasionally tendentious, investigation").

Dave Lucas and WEATHER in the Cleveland Plain Dealer; The Forward features David Caplan for National Poetry Month.

The Studio 360 American Icons radio series ran a story about the song “Dixie” that features commentary by Coleman Hutchisson, author of the forthcoming book tentatively titled Apples of Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America. This undeniably catchy minstrel tune has a fascinating and complex history, and it continues to stir emotions of all kinds 150 years after it was written.