Mara Naselli in The Believer:
In all her work, Biss scrutinizes the nature of our connection in American life. In one of her early essays, “Time and Distance Overcome,” she looks at how telephone poles, instruments of communication, became gallows in public lynchings across the country in the early twentieth century. Vaccines—our greatest collective defense against viral disease—become a symbol of violation and trespass. Money, our shared concrete metaphor of value, becomes a tool of exclusion. Each subject Biss examines exposes the contested ground on which we make and remake our American identities.
More here.