Reviews

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks

Only show reviews with written explanations

aymarax's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

3,5 tbh

yoshisreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

While I am giving this book a low rating, I'm still glad I read it. The content is really good and extremely informative and relevant to today's work of decolonisation. The reason I'm giving it a low score is because the writing is difficult to get through. The style is very repetitive, sentences are extremely long so you lose the point halfway through, and I don't think the editor really gave much input because I found multiple places where the book repeated a date twice in the sentence. If the writing was tighter, it would easily increase the score. For me personally, I'm not sure if I would give this book a really high rating simply because I am not that interested in anthropology or archeology which is obviously the main point of the book.

lshatilla's review against another edition

Go to review page

a real reading week read... ultimately read this for a research paper, but i really enjoyed it (hence why i read the entire thing for once!) and would definetly recommend it.

carlycormier_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

Content Warnings

b3thj0n3s01's review against another edition

Go to review page

informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

lydiahousley's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

A timely and well researched book on a topic that is crying out for more attention. I appreciate the academic style as befitting a curator but, if the aim is to incite action among the general public, this should have been a much more accessible read.

Nonetheless, a great review of the historical context around the looting of the Benin bronzes and an impassioned invocation of the need for these objects to be returned. Takes a while to get through, but worth it for those interested in the topic.