I know it’s Thursday already, but I couldn’t let The New York Times Book Review cover book review story go by without comment.
They got historian Caroline Elkins to review Wall Street Journal reporter Helene Cooper’s memoir, The House at Sugar Beach of Cooper’s upper class childhood in Liberia.
The editors published a note on Elkins in the Review’s brief “Up Front” section (usually highlighting a reviewer). The note included excerpts from an email addressed by Elkins to the editors:
Cooper’s memoir shows the reader what I so often have to remind even the most learned of audiences: Africa is a continent, not a country. It is a place where race, ethnicity, class, generation and gender intersect in myriad ways to produce some of the richest and most complex histories the world has witnessed.
So knowing that now, what do you think would be the title of the review by Elkins on the front page of the Book Review (accompanied by the graphic pasted above) in big letters:
AFRICAN IDYLL.
Wow.