Books Review

“Augusta Braxton Baker grew up to be a master storyteller. But before that she was an amazing story listener,” begins this glowing account of legendary storytelling librarian Baker (1911–1998). Starting with her Baltimore childhood, where her grandmother “shaped incredible worlds and passed them down,” McDaniel’s telling highlights Baker’s route to helping “other people become better […]

important writers. Born in 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Chloe Ardelia Wofford grew up listening to her mother’s singing and stories and her grandfather’s violin. The musicality and narratives remained with her, as did a love of language. She started to read early, the only child in her first grade class to do so. She continued

Abstract Jonathan Crary’s Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (2022) presents a piercing critique of Western techno-consumer culture and the innumerable digital landscapes now created by the internet. Drawing on sociology, politics, optics, and cultural theory, Crary argues that a sustainable and liveable future must be one that refuses the totalising