The February issue of Library Journal features a slew of reviews for Yale Press books. Here’s an idea of what they’re saying.

On Eloquence by Denis Donoghue struck Library Journal as “a well-written and engaging exploration of eloquence in literature.” They recommended this book as “an enlightening read.”

In this highly enjoyable reminder of why we should care about eloquence in literature and speech, Denis Donoghue insists that eloquence is not just a rhetorical tool, but an intrinsically valuable “upsurge of vitality for its own sake.” He offers many instances of eloquence in words and suggests the forms our appreciation of them should take.

Library Journal said that Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, edited by Susan Earle, “attests to the undeniable significance of Douglas’s artistic achievements.” They give this “well illustrated” book the “highest recommendation for any library with an interest in art or African American history.”

This book is a major new study of the life and career of Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas––the “father of Black American art”––and his significant role in the evolution of American modernism.

Reading Geoffrey Hill’s A Treatise of Civil Power, Library Journal found that these “complex poems are rich in literary allusions,” and that Hill “richly textures sound within his work.”

Geoffrey Hill’s major new collection takes its title from a Miltonic pamphlet of 1659 that attacks the concept of a state church as well as corruption in church governance. Here we confront Hill’s familiar obsessions—language, governance, war, politics, the contemporary and classical worlds, and the nature of poetry itself.

Library Journal complimented Charlotte Brewer’s Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED, noting its “distinctive focus.”

This history of the celebrated Oxford English Dictionary and its makers examines how and why the dictionary developed from 1928 to the present. The book explores the methods, biases, tradeoffs, and intentions of OED editors and others who battled to keep pace with the explosion in vocabulary, changing cultural attitudes, and technological advances.

To read more reviews from Library Journal, click here.