Monday, September 08, 2014

When Book Reviews Go Wrong

September 5, 2014, 

PHOTO: Some recent book reviews have inspired more critical ire than the original subject matter.
Authors have always been somewhat wary of literary critics. But in the age of social media, reviewers can also easily become the subject of ire themselves.
To wit, the Internet's claws came out today to scratch at a bizarre, anonymous book review featured in The Economist.

In a summation of the book "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" by Edward Baptist, the reviewer wrote: "Mr. Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. This is not history; it is advocacy."

The assertion that African-American slaves were not all necessarily victims drew the ire of commenters and media bloggers alike -- and quickly began trending online.
In response, The Economist has since withdrawn the review and issued the following statement: "In our review of 'The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism' by Edward Baptist, we said: 'Mr. Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.' There has been widespread criticism of this, and rightly so. Slavery was an evil system, in which the great majority of victims were blacks, and the great majority of whites involved in slavery were willing participants and beneficiaries of that evil. We regret having published this and apologise for having done so."

But The Economist isn't the first publication to be taken to task for its literary critiques.
A few months back, a New York Times book review also was called out for misrepresenting a collection of short stories. 

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