Review roundup

Selling the Congo by Matthew G. Stanard in H-France Review

“The breadth of topics covered in this book is wide--each of them could fill a separate monograph. It is to Stanard’s credit that he is able to pull them together. In terms of primary source work, I believe the strength of the book lies in his discussions of the contributions of local organizations to the promotion of Belgian imperialism.”

-Sarah Van Beurden

 

The Days Are Gods by Liz Stephens in the San Francisco/Sacramento Book Review

In Stephen’s book The Days Are Gods we peer into the challenges Liz and husband Chris faced in uprooting their comfortable lives in CA to get closer to big skies, deep canyons, and becoming one with the land. Life in Wellsville is anything but easy. Simple does not equal easy and through hard work and time, they carve out a meaningful life there. We come to know the quirky Wellsville Mormons; cattlemen, sheep herders, people used to making a living by the sweat of their brow, working the land.

-Laura Friedkin

 

Weeds by Evelyn I. Funda in Kirkus

An only daughter’s eloquent lament for her family’s farm, seasoned with dashes of feminism and naturalism.

“Funda (American Literature/Utah State Univ.) considers the legacy of being raised during the 1960s in a patriarchal family of Czech immigrants and in a small town in Idaho that expected girls to marry and forsake their agricultural roots. Her debut is not, however, a straightforward narrative of generational change amid hardships; rural life expands here into a canvas for literary as well as personal reflection. Funda ranges over subjects as diverse as seed hybridization, ex-urbanites, early-20th-century Idaho, storytelling, postwar exile and mutable family mythologies.”

-Kirkus

 

The X-15 Rocket Plane by Michelle Evans in Book Verdict

“Aerospace specialists and aficionados will appreciate Evans’s introduction detailing her lifelong interest in space exploration and her afterword, which offers a poignant necrology of X-15 staff… A cogently written and well-deserved tribute to the individuals who helped take a winged rocket beyond Earth’s confining atmosphere.”

- John Carver Edwards