Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Transforming Educations Awards: Winner

 


Back in May our ongoing children's literature project (see more here, here and here) won a UEA Transforming Education Award for Employability and Experiential Learning. All of the books published so far through this project are now part of their own UEA Publishing Project imprint, Children's Corner Editions, and are available here.

Thursday, May 05, 2022

Review: Journal of Southern History

Deep Water got a great review in the Journal of Southern History. Here are some snippets:


Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Deep Water: Reviews

Deep Water just got a lovely review in the Journal of American History by Gregg Andrews. Available here for those with access - some choice snippets:


Plus, Joe B. Fulton also reviewed the book for the Mark Twain Journal, and had equally kind things to say about it:



Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Review: Louisiana History

River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain has been reviewed by Daniel Claro in Louisiana History (50:2, Spring 2009). He writes, "this book succeeds in depicting the wonderfully rich literary context that inspired and informed Twain's career."

For a sneak preview of what I'm currently working on, click here.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Review: Journal of Southern History

River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain has been reviewed by James E. Seelye in the Journal of Southern History (May 2010). He writes:
"River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi before Mark Twain by Thomas Ruys Smith is an engaging guide to changing conceptions of the Mississippi River during the antebellum period. Smith's accessible and well-written narrative catalogs the variety of views and commentary about the "American Nile" from a range of individuals, including writers, foreign visitors, and U.S. presidents. One of the work's biggest strengths is the wide spectrum of views that Smith examines [...] Smith uses an impressive array of primary sources by those with firsthand knowledge of or associations with the Mississippi River [...] Cultural historians will find the book to be a solid portrait of antebellum life along the Mississippi River; those interested in historical memory will find the study especially useful."

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Review: Journal of the Early Republic

River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain has been reviewed in the Journal of the Early Republic. Ann Ostendorf writes:
"Thomas Ruys Smith examines the meaning of the river in the antebellum American imagination. Using literary analysis, Smith unpacks the multitude of written and visual representations of the river as it flowed through American culture and consciousness [...] Smith shows how Twain's postbellum fascination with the literary Mississippi emerged out of decades of prior cultural appropriations [...] Smith's extensive uses of primary-source quotations are often delightfully expressive of contemporary worldviews [...] Ultimately, this work is a creative expression of the nineteenth-century American mind and culture through the ways people of that era viewed this iconic natural resource."

Friday, February 12, 2010

Review: Southern Literary Journal

River of Dreams has been reviewed by Scott Romine in the Southern Literary Journal, as part of a longer essay, "The Nature of the South" (42:1, Fall 2009). He writes:
River of Dreams is a rich study, splendidly researched and elegantly written. Although its subtitle and blurb from Louis Budd position it relative to Mark Twain, the book’s true achievement lies in its nuanced account of the “countless [antebellum] stories . . . told in countless ways about the giant river that bisected America” (194). If, as Budd suggests, River of Dreams should be required reading for readers of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is equally valuable to students of antebellum culture [...] archivally and synthetically rich—indeed, it is quite dazzling.
You can read the full review here.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Journal of Illinois History

River of Dreams has been reviewed in the Journal of Illinois History by James Hurt. Hurt says:

River of Dreams is an impressive achievement that will interest not only students of the American landscape (or riverscape) and the cultural uses to which it has been put but also "general readers" [...] the book as it stands is an intelligent, original, and imaginative contribution to American cultural studies.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies

River of Dreams has been reviewed by Luther Brown in Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. He writes: "This is a valuable book and should be in the collections of anyone concerned with re-presenting place, early Americana, The River, and certainly Mark Twain."

Click for bigger images:

American Literature

River of Dreams has received mention in American Literature:

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Booklist Review





Writing in Booklist (May 1, 2007), the publication of the American Library Association, George Cohen described River of Dreams as "a lively and wide-ranging account of this majestic body of water."