Portside

The journal’s intrepid book reviewer surveys a mélange of fall 2021 university and scholarly books on human origins and development, finding some surprising commonality in an otherwise often conflictual field.

The reviewer highlights some of the noteworthy (and readable) academic press books coming out in the first half of 2021.

Three efforts to right historical wrongs - Nuremberg Trials' prosecution of Nazi war crimes but not crimes against its own people, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation established the former if not the latter, and today's demand for reparations.

In his review of Eric Schwitzgebel's A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, Scott McLemee also focuses on love.

Timing matters. The book under review--a history of whistle blowing-- was released coterminous with news of a whistleblower's alleging evidence of Trump's criminal misfeasance in office, the commission of which could cost him the presidency.

Peter Martin's The Dictionary Wars: The American Fight Over the English Language shows Noah Webster as the sort of ideologue who's convinced he has a historical mission and carries himself accordingly, writes Scott McLemee.

Charting worldwide disaffection with liberal democracy, the book is a deep dive into Trumpism, Macronism, Brexit and question marks over the European Union, as well as mass movements weary of voting corrupt politicos in and out of office.

December 10 was International Human Rights Day, making the book under review a timely, sobering take on the uphill struggle for human rights at home and abroad in the face of rising nativism, racism, xenophobia - paeans to alleged traditional values.

Masterpiece or not, William S. Burroughs' "The Revised Boy Scout Manual": An Electronic Revolution fills a puzzling lacuna in the Beat author's bibliography, and offers an foretaste of the viperous Age of Trump.

Reports of the forcible separation of parents and children at the border by U.S. immigration authorities tell only part of the story of the violence now being directed against hard-won norms of civil society.