Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

This collection of new critical work will be a boon for anyone with a scholarly fix on cities, not only in literature but also in generale.g., in such areas as art, history, environmental studies, gender.  The front matter includes an excellent introduction by McNamara (Univ. of Houston, Clear Lake) and a creative chronology.  The 18 edgy essays that follow map the evolution of city representation from classical and biblical times through Europe to America to the wider world.  Antonis Balasopoulos's rich exploration of "the city as idea" acts as an intellectual prologue, and the essays that follow gradually and deliberately take the reader from familiar traditional world lit to postmodern works that have ruptured genre to create a sense of place.  McNamara is justified in calling these essays "splendid": they maintain a scrupulously high level of scholarship, insight, and accessibility.  A "missing" chapter on women, commissioned but not delivered in time, prompts McNamara to an apologetic reassurance "that women have not been entirely omitted"also true.  Creative readers may like the challenge of extrapolating a "woman/city" chapter (and perhaps others) from, or over against, some of the provocative material on offer.  Notes accompany each essay; bibliography acts as "guide to further reading"; index is mostly proper names but includes major concepts and movements.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers.