In Women's Irony: Rewriting Feminist Rhetorical Histories, author Tarez Samra Graban synthesizes three decades of scholarship in rhetoric, linguistics, and philosophy to present irony as a critical model for feminist rhetorical historiography that is not linked to humor, lying, or intention. Graban challenges critical methods in rhetoric, asking scholars in rhetoric and its related disciplines to rethink how they produce historical knowledge and use archives to recover women's performances in political situations.

Robert C. Kriebel's sympathetic biography of the prominent nineteenth-century Lafayette family weaves the story of four fascinating individuals into the web of state and national history and culture. The family members include John A. Stein, the distinguished state politician who devoted years to the founding of Purdue University; the indomitable mother, Virginia, who pursued a career in the local library when left widowed and penniless; the talented, albeit disreputable, Orth Stein, who achieved prominence as a journalist and illustrator but was also tried for murder; and the sheltered Evaleen Stein, who achieved local fame as a poet and author of children's books.