What is it about?
New Books across the Disciplines is a bibliographic resource that facilitates a cross-disciplinary survey of the newest book publishing in the field of medieval and early modern studies. It appears in each issue of The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies published by Duke University Press. Coverage is comprehensive for North American and British publishers, and other European titles are included as well: 150 or so books are featured in each installment.
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Why is it important?
Only a select portion of academic books are ever reviewed critically, and reviews often don't appear for several years. New Books across the Disciplines gives scholars a much quicker, big-picture view of publishing in medieval and early modern studies. With few exceptions, books appearing here have been published within the previous two years, many before they are ordered and shelved by libraries. New Books across the Disciplines also presents this new publishing in an interdisciplinary context, bringing books from different disciplines together under various current topics. This allows scholars from one field to learn about new work in another complementary field, and it promotes cross-disciplinary reading.
Perspectives
I have never found critical book reviews on the whole to be especially helpful. Books are highly selected for critical review, so you can’t learn about many books in this way. Way too often a critical review offers little more than a summary of chapters, does not discuss the book in a sufficiently wide scholarly context, and may grind personal axes. In New Books across the Disciplines, I want to inform scholars about the breadth of new publications—without any criticism. Here are the books: you decide which ones are worth looking into.
Dr. Michael E. Cornett
Duke University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: New Books across the Disciplines, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, September 2016, Duke University Press,
DOI: 10.1215/10829636-3644170.
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