Book reviews, Summer 2020

These reviews are now available to read through Project Muse and in the printed Journal, Volume 55 Number 2.

Numbered Lives coverNumbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media, by Jacqueline Wernimont
Reviewed by John Henry Adams
"A feminist media history of quantification, uncovering the stories behind the tools and technologies we use to count, measure, and weigh our lives and realities." (MIT Press)

 

 

 

 

Popular Print Culture coverThe Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Volume Five: US Popular Print Culture to 1860, edited by Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray
Reviewed by Tracy Bonfitto
"Forty-one contributors from across disciplines consider either literary practices of diverse groups or specific genres of popular print passing through people's hands, which included advertisements, almanacs, captivity narratives, ephemera, lithographs, magazines, newspapers, nonfiction, novels, pamphlets, poetry, and slave narratives." (Oxford University Press)
 

 

Joy of Search coverThe Joy of Search: A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the Basics, by Daniel M. Russell
Reviewed by Cai Fan Du
"In The Joy of Search, Daniel Russell shows us how to be great online researchers. We don't have to be computer geeks or a scholar searching out obscure facts; we just need to know some basic methods." (MIT Press)




 

 

Digital CashDigital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, by Finn Brunton
Reviewed by Gili Vidan
"The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators—from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies." (Princeton University Press)