Dominick LaCapra’s collection of essays about history and reading is based on a series of popular lectures that he recently gave at the University of British Columbia. The book’s cover is appropriately adorned with Vermeer’s painting Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (circa the 1650s), which shows a girl so absorbed by her reading that she is oblivious to the world beyond the open window. The multi-faceted painting is an apt metaphorical reflection of LaCapra’s aims: in his initial chapter on history, reading, and critical theory, LaCapra discerns no less than five ways of reading.

For some readers, LaCapra’s writing style may get in the way of his message. His sentence structure and vocabulary is self-consciously awkward in order to discomfit and provoke the reader into reflection. For example, his five ways of reading include the denial of reading, synoptic reading, deconstructive reading, redemptive reading, and dialogic reading – “the attempt to articulate the intertwining of voices in texts with the interactions of people in historical spaces.” In his opinion, such sophisticated attentiveness is needed to bring new views of the past into the field.

LaCapra’s chapter on Foucault is brought into fruitful tension with one on Tocqueville. According to LaCapra, the confrontation of these two thinkers, both of whom were fascinated by the French Revolution and its aftermath, but separated by a century, demonstrates that Foucault and Tocqueville can still be productively reread.

LaCapra, currently a professor of humanities at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, sets himself up as a therapist of sorts for scholars engaged in contemporary debates. As LaCapra sees psychoanalysis and deconstruction as necessary foundations for any worthy critical thought, this book will likely only appeal to those already committed to theoretical reflection. But it is certainly a welcome addition to the literature.