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Bernd Stiegler: Traveling in Place (Hardcover, 2013, University of Chicago Press) 3 stars

How a house arrest in 18th century France led to a new genre of travel …

A book that goes nowhere

2 stars

How can you write about someone under house arrest without telling the reader why the prisoner was arrested? There are multiple lacunae of this kind throughout the book, and this makes it a frustrating read. I had to Google a lot of back stories and biographies the author just didn't think were important enough to include.

It's essentially a bibliography divided into categories, with each chapter being just an introduction to the books that fall into that category. Taken at that face value, I guess it could be useful for further study, but it's not very good in and of itself.

Pretty turgid prose. Not the worst academic book I've ever read, but that's faint praise.