[It’s been a bit since I dedicated a blog series to highlighting great new scholarly books—so this week I’m dedicating a blog series to highlighting great new scholarly books. Please add more recommendations, new, old, and anywhere in between, in comments!]
As someone
who has struggled at times to come up with catchy book titles, and who has
recently changed the title of his
work in progress, I’m always impressed when a scholarly author can come up
with a title that is both extremely catchy yet at the same time truly captures
key subjects of the project (ie, isn’t just clickbait, understandable as that
goal always would be). No recent publication manages that difficult balance
better than Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’ The
Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn—that title
sounds like a sleazy campaign attack ad, and indeed this figure was used in precisely
those ways to destroy the career of Martin Van Buren’s VP Richard Mentor
Johnson; but it’s also a genuine reflection of the nuanced layers of Chinn,
Johnson, their marriage, and the many early 19th century historical
and cultural issues to which Myers connects them in this fascinating book. Come
for the title, stay for the whole thing!
Last book
rec tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other books or publications you’d recommend?
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