Book Review Mondays

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Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
by Steve Knopper

Book Review by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD.

Knopper, a reporter for Rolling Stone, has written a 301-page chronicle of the rise and fall of the recording industry. If you are a music collector, afficionado, or just an interested listener, you will find this book fascinating. The book is entertaining because of all the specific examples, anecdotes, and detail about the personalities of recording-industry executives. His word-portraits of executives are elaborate, intricate, and explicit. It is extremely well-written and easy to follow and understand. In addition, it is jam-packed with wonderful, riveting information. There are 27 pages of copious notes. Knopper’s prologue covers the years 1979-82; chapter 1 covers 1983-86; chapter 2 covers 1984-89; chapters 3 and 4 cover 1998-2001; chapter 5 covers 2002-2003; and chapter 6 covers 2003-2007. Knopper’s focus is on the destruction of the recording industry; little time is spent on the future except to say that the future is in digital recordings. I highly recommend this book and only regret that it wasn’t longer!

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Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement
by Sally G. McMillen

Book Review by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD.

Having recently visited Seneca Falls, New York, and the National Woman’s Rights Museum along the Genessee Canal, and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home in Seneca Falls, both located in the Finger Lakes District of New York, gave me a special feel for the information in this fine book. Just to show you the kind of book it is, there are 44 pages of “Notes” at the back of the book, that are incredibly detailed and specific. For further insight into the kind of book it is, McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Department Chair at Davidson College, in Davidson, North Carolina. This book is a thorough, comprehensive, well-documented examination that “focuses on the principal players and some of the seminal events that occurred in the years just prior to Seneca Falls and in the decades that followed. Four remarkable women [Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony] were central to the nineteenth-century women’s movement. They provide the framework for this book” (pp. 4-5). The background of how McMillen became interested in women’s issues, discussed in the “Introduction” to the book (pp. 6-7), provides a fascinating exploration not just to the etymology of this book, but to how a professor is born, as well. The structure of McMillen’s book is chronological in which she first offers an overview of American women’s world before Seneca Falls, and then examines reform efforts during the antebellum period. Seneca Falls itself is the subject of chapter 3, then she looks at the nascent women’s rights movement of the 1850s. The next chapter (5) examines the impact of the Civil War on the women’s movement, and her final chapter in this 310-page book, covers the years up to 1890, when two women’s rights organizations fought on several fronts. McMillen ends her “Introduction” by saying, “This book ends with the two organizations reuniting in 1890 and a second generation of women taking over. While suffrage was not yet a reality, the seeds planted at Seneca Falls in 1848 had grown into a national women’s movement that ultimately uplifted the lives of half this nation’s population” (p. 8). If you want to read and fully understand the origins of the women’s rights movement, you will find this book compelling, extraordinary, accessible, and readable.

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