Book reviews in the age of social media

Despite the large quantity and wide variety of popular science books available in biology, most undergraduate biology majors seldom read full-length books outside of class. To ensure that the students in my Writing in Biology class are exposed to such books, I assign a book review essay and provide an annotated list of a few dozen books in genetics, evolution, and other areas of biology. The assignment also includes a section on the book author’s style, in which students use material discussed earlier in the class. Informal presentations of the books provide opportunities for various discussions. The assignment (including the list of books) is included in an Additional file 1.

A Sociology of Appalachia: A Book Review Essay: Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia, by Steven Stoll

No abstract available.

Book review essay: The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism

J.F. Dorahy's The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism (2019) offers contemporary readers a conscientious assessment of the intellectual initiatives of Ágnes Heller, György Márkus, and Ferenc Fehér, both in the years immediately following their apprenticeship with György Lukács, and later, through their independent philosophical endeavours. Dorahy's book also pinpoints the Budapest thinkers' proposal for a radical democratic reckoning, and begins to suggest how that proposal might today bear on global practice and globally-minded theories. The book is an excellent introduction to the ideas of Heller and Márkus. But through them, it is also a striking and thoroughly relevant consideration of the possibilities for an ethics of planetary commitment, and for a critical theory fixed upon incorporating the vigorous rootstock of radical democracy with a multidimensional, pluralistic social order.

Museums, Activism, and the Importance of Self-Reflection: Book Review Essay

Review of: Apsel, Joyce, and Amy Sodaro, eds. Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory, and Human Rights. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020, hardback £120, paperback £34.99, ebook £31.49, pp.232. Chynoweth, Adele, Bernadette Lynch, Klaus Petersen, and Sarah Smed, eds. Museums and Social Change: Challenging the Unhelpful Museum. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021, hardback £120, paperback £34.99, ebook £31.49, pp.214. Cole, Johnetta Betsch, and Laura L. Lott, eds. Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, hardback £61.41, paperback £25.29, ebook £21.67, pp.182.