"A remarkable and wide-ranging work, tracing the history of the swing on a global basis, while embedding it in a larger history of the emotional significance of vertigo and balance. A striking combination of intellectual and popular-cultural history, with an unusually rich, imaginative range of sources."

Peter N. Stearns, George Mason University

"After reading this book you may never see a swing, hear music, or have sex the same way again. Brilliant, wide-ranging, and fiercely learned, Moscoso’s new book, like its subject, jolts our mind from its fixed grooves and sets our nerves a-tingling."

Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University Chicago

“Arc of Feeling places swings in an—appropriately—dizzying series of contexts over the centuries from the gallows to the garden and from play to sex and death. Moscoso's book is a real tour de force.”

Peter Burke, professor emeritus of cultural history and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge

"Arc of Feeling offers a global history of the swing. . . . [Moscoso’s] oscillation between scholarly learning, editorial intrusion, deadpan revelation and esoteric conclusion creates dramatic, if occasionally overwhelming, results. . . . Arc of Feeling can be praised for its ambition and daring, which helps to justify the global scope."

Times Literary Supplement