Journal of American Folklore Reviews

Preprint versions of reviews—of books, sound recordings, films, videotapes, DVDs, exhibitions, and events—destined for print publication in the Journal of American Folklore will appear here. We will publish new online reviews approximately every three months.

Access to online reviews of the works listed below is available only to members of the American Folklore Society. As an example for non-members of the quality of Journal reviews, however, please click here to read a review by John Allan Cicala, forthcoming in the Journal, of the book Pilaf, Pozole, and Pad Thai: American Women and Ethnic Food, Ed. Sherrie A. Inness.

Book Reviews

The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. By Barre Toelken. [Folklife of the West series, Vol. 2.] (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2003. Pp xii + 204, 62 color and black and white photographs, preface, notes, index.)

Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature. By William Hansen (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 548, bibliography, index of ancient sources, index of tale types and motifs, general index).

Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote. By Janet Theophano. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. xviii + 362, notes, bibliography, illustrations, index)

Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943. By Mark Cohen. (New York: Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, 2003. Pp. xiii +382, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index.)

Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs. Assembled, translated, and annotated by John Colarusso. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xxi+552, illustrations, appendices, bibliography.)

Popular Imagination: Essays on Fantasy and Cultural Practice. Ed. Sven-Erik Klinkmann. NNF Publications 12. (Turku: Nordic Network of Folklore, 2002. Pp. 311, introduction, bibliography, filmography, discography, illustrations.)

Re-Situating Folklore: Folk Contexts and Twentieth-Century Literature and Art. By Frank de Caro and Rosan Augusta Jordan. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. Pp. x + 332, acknowledgements, introduction, index, notes, photos and illustrations.)

Robert Johnson: Lost and Found. By Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch. (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 160, bibliography, index).

Singing the Songs of My Ancestors: The Life and Music of Helma Swan, Makah Elder. By Linda J. Goodman and Helma Swan; foreward by Bill Holm. (The Civilization of the American Indian Series, v. 244; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 339, notes, glossary, bibliography, index, maps, illustrations).

Swinging in Place: Porch Life in Southern Culture. By Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp xii + 193, bibliography, illustrations, index.)

Storytelling: Interdisciplinary & Intercultural Perspectives. Edited by Irene Maria F. Blayer and Monica Sanchez. (New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Pp. xi + 175, bibliographies, index).

Telling Stories the Kiowa Way. By Gus Palmer Jr. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2003. Pp. xxx + 145, “works cited”, index).

Multimedia Reviews

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Edited by Francis James Child, New York: ESPB Publishing, Ltd and Heritage Muse™, Inc., 2003. (Digital edition, includes maps, place names index, WAV and MIDI files, lexicon, audio CD.)

Transports of Delight: The Ricksha Arts of Bangladesh. By Joanna Kirkpatrick. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003. CD-ROM, illustrations, separate articles, bibliography, glossary. System requirements: PC system with display set for 16-bit color at 800 x 600 screen resolution, 4x or better CD-ROM drive, Apple QuickTime 4.0 or higher; Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. Video Segments require Pentium II Processor.)