Katherine Fischer Taylor

What a disappointment. The Author's premise is a fine one, but it awaits a vastly better scholar-writer than she to bring it to fulfillment. She observes that Parisian court-rooms of that time were designed to manifest and exploit the implicit theatricality of the judicial process. Unfortunately, her descriptions both of the rooms and the events which happened there are dull, diffuse, and (more to the point) utterly undramatic -- and not even convincing. This is one of the very few scholarly books which I have not even tried to sell to recoup my investment. I couldn't imagine another sucker like me, so I just abandoned it. Odd coincidence that one of the very few other books about which I have felt this strongly (Michael Marissen's opusculum on the Brandenburg Concerti) also came from Princeton University Press around this time. Was there some sort of miasma hanging over Nassau Street? I sure don't remember it, and I was there there often enough.… (más)