University of Chicago Press Books: New books

American Universities in a Global Market

Charles T. Clotfelter — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In higher education, the United States is the preeminent global leader, dominating the list of the world’s top research universities. But there are signs that America’s position of global leadership will face challenges in the future, as it has in other realms of international competition. American Universities in a Global Market addresses the variety of issues crucial to understanding this preeminence and this challenge. The book examines the various factors that contributed to America’s success in higher education, including openness to people and ideas, generous governmental support, and a tradition of decentralized friendly competition. It also explores the advantages of holding a dominant position in this marketplace and examines the current state of American higher education in a comparative context, placing particular emphasis on how market forces affect universities. By discussing the differences in quality among students and institutions around the world, this volume sheds light on the singular aspects of American higher education.

World Small-Scale Fisheries

Ratana Chuenpagdee — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Small-scale fisheries have received less attention in the global policy arena than their bigger counterparts, but they have much to offer the world in terms of employment, food security, and conservation. World Small-Scale Fisheries makes a new case for the importance of small-scale fisheries and provides twenty in-depth studies of businesses from around the world. An important reference book for researchers in fisheries management as well as policymakers, World Small-Scale Fisheries demonstrates the opportunities for sustainability and the remarkable strengths of small-scale fishing operations.

Life on Mars

Stephen Lacey; Ruth McElroy — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This collection is the first book-length study dedicated to the British television series Life on Mars, the American remake, and its sequel, Ashes to Ashes. Stephen Lacey and Ruth McElroy bring together experts to engage critically with the series. Among the topics discussed are television in the national and international marketplace; genre and narrative; the series’ representation of the 1970s and its portrayal of “Britishness”; and the impact of and the response to the series in the United States.

China's Growing Role in World Trade

Robert C. Feenstra; Shang-Jin Wei — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, China's economic dynamism has generated considerable attention and concern in the United States and beyond. While some analysts have warned of the potential pitfalls of China's rise—the loss of jobs, for example—others have highlighted the benefits of new market and investment opportunities for US firms.

Bringing together an expert group of contributors, China's Growing Role in World Trade undertakes an empirical investigation of the effects of China's new status. The essays collected here provide detailed analyses of the microstructure of trade, the macroeconomic implications, sector-level issues, and foreign direct investment. This volume's careful examination of micro data in light of established economic theories clarifies a number of misconceptions, disproves some conventional wisdom, and documents data patterns that enhance our understanding of China's trade and what it may mean to the rest of the world.

Ethics of Interrogation

Michael Skerker — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The act of interrogation, and the debate over its use, pervades our culture, whether through fictionalized depictions in movies and television or discussions of real-life interrogations on the news. But despite daily mentions of the practice in the media, there is a lack of informed commentary on its moral implications. Moving beyond the narrow focus on torture that has characterized most work on the subject, An Ethics of Interrogation is the first book to fully address this complex issue.

In this important new examination of a controversial subject, Michael Skerker confronts a host of philosophical and legal issues, from the right to privacy and the privilege against compelled self-incrimination to prisoner rights and the legal consequences of different modes of interrogation for both domestic criminal and foreign terror suspects. These topics raise serious questions about the morality of keeping secrets as well as the rights of suspected terrorists and insurgents. Thoughtful consideration of these subjects leads Skerker to specific policy recommendations for law enforcement, military, and intelligence professionals.

Migration and Welfare in the New Europe

Emma Carmel; Alfio Cerami; Theodoros Papadopoulos — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The debate over migration and social integration has emerged as one of the most controversial and important subjects of the new century, and Migration and Welfare in the New Europe moves that debate forward on two fronts. Empirically, this collection provides a thorough grounding in the relationship between migration, migration policies, and social inclusion in the European Union. And theoretically, expert contributors explore the way that the development of migration policies is shaped by emotions, discourses, narratives, and both formal and informal aspects of governance.

Mission of Change in Southwest Alaska

Ann Fienup-Riordan — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Mission of Change is an oral history describing various types of change—political, social, cultural, and religious—as seen through the eyes of Father Astruc and Paul Dixon, non-Natives who dedicated their lives to working with the Yup’ik people. Their stories are framed by the an analytic history of regional changes, together with current anthropological theory on the nature of cultural change and the formation of cultural identity. The book presents a subtle and emotionally moving account of the region and the roles of two men, both of whom view issues from a Catholic perspective yet are closely attuned to and involved with changes in the Yup’ik community.

Job and the god of Babylon

Jacob Kaaks — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In this new analysis of the Book of Job, Jacob Kaaks looks at the theopolitical motives of the priests who assembled the Old Testament and puts one of the most puzzling books of the bible into the context of Akkadian literature. In this reading, Job is not the long-suffering embodiment of piety, but a figure with the ability to guide an evolving concept of God. Complete with a new translation of the Book of Job that takes into account Kaaks’s scholarship, Job and the god of Babylon is an impressive study that recasts the Old Testament not as a religious text existing in a vacuum, but as a product of its historical era.

Job and the god of Babylon

Jacob Kaaks — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Trends in Communication Policy Research

Manuel Puppis; Natascha Just — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

With contributions from leading international experts from within both the communications industry and academia, Trends in Communication Policy Research comprises the very latest developments in the theories, methods, and practical applications of the dynamic field of communication policy research. Topical and of high societal and political relevance, this authoritative and up-to-date volume will prove an invaluable reference for students and scholars seeking to understand future trends in communication policy research.

Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work

Saul Becker; Alan Bryman; Harry Ferguson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Thoroughly revised and expanded, this new edition of Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work shows readers the importance of research, how to interpret it, and how to effectively carry out and report research of their own. This landmark textbook is an essential guide to the methods, approaches, and debates that are required knowledge for students, policymakers, and practitioners.

Understanding Research for Social Policy and Social Work

Saul Becker; Alan Bryman; Harry Ferguson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Social Work and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People

Julie Fish — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Broadening the agenda for social work, Julie Fish here provides an in-depth survey of how social workers involved with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans people can provide appropriate care across the lifespan, including working with children and older people. She also tackles the challenges presented by working with asylum-seekers and people with mental health or substance abuse issues. Grounding theoretical understandings of sexuality in current policy and practice, Social Work and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People is an essential tool for social work students and practitioners.

Social Work and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People

Julie Fish — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

City in a Garden

Julia S. Bachrach — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The City in a Garden is a compelling look at Chicago’s remarkable and long-overlooked park system. Through unprecedented access to a cache of historical plans, photographs, and drawings, Julia S. Bachrach documents the city’s 175-year commitment to its public parks and explains how luminaries such as architect Daniel H. Burnham, landscape architect and conservationist Jens Jensen, and social reformer Jane Addams shaped and influenced the city’s green spaces.

This revised edition of The City in a Garden illuminates Chicago’s ongoing commitment to its expansive park district. Since 2001, Chicago’s parks have seen a renaissance. More than a billion dollars have been invested in a wide range of projects, including the restoration of dozens of historically significant buildings, landscapes, and artworks; the reconstruction of the lakefront revetment system; the creation of new gardens and natural areas; and the construction of new beach and field houses. Chicagoans now enjoy the addition of new and innovative green spaces such as Millennium Park and Palmisano Nature Park—a twenty-seven-acre park created from an old stone quarry in the South Side Bridgeport neighborhood.

Featuring new research, an expanded glossary, and additional documentary photographs, this beautifully illustrated book is a must for any Chicagoan.

Buying Power

Lawrence B. Glickman — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A definitive history of consumer activism, Buying Power traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists’ relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.

Art Education and Contemporary Culture

Gary Granville — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Using Ireland as a model, Art Education and Contemporary Culture offers a comprehensive treatment of art education in primary and secondary schools, institutions of higher education, cultural institutions, and the diverse communities they serve. Gary Granville has brought together a diverse group of eminent art educators who, together, lay out the opportunities and challenges of art practice while paying close attention to relevant national policy. Rounding out the discussion are essays that locate the challenges and innovations of art education from in international perspective.

God Head

Leonard Cline — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Lavished with praise at the time of its 1925 publication, Leonard Cline’s phantasmagoric God Head is being republished so a new generation of readers can marvel at its dark magic. Cline’s mesmerizing debut follows the journey of Paulus Kempf, a fugitive labor agitator who takes refuge with a colony of Finns on the remote shores of Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Kempf, a former surgeon, poet, writer, sculptor, and hyper-intellectual, is at first deeply impressed by the folklore and traditions of the quiet, gentle Finns, not to mention their generosity and hospitality. But he soon begins to play upon their superstitions and exploits their kindness through the power of his cunning and imagination, manipulating them into seeing him as a kind of a god.

As Cline’s novel hurtles toward its unforgettable climax, Kempf’s capacity for compassion or mercy swiftly falls to the wayside as he seduces his host’s wife and then murders the man in cold blood. Soon thereafter he carves a giant God Head into the side of a nearby mountainside, which the villagers look upon with awe and fear, held in the thrall of Kempf’s mysterious intimations of its malicious power. Having achieved complete domination over the Finns, Kempf ultimately tires of their gullibility and returns to civilization, his quest for self-mastery complete.

God Head’s descent into the dark void of the human heart will thrill modern readers who are sure to cherish this lost literary artifact from the shadow canon of American fiction.

Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition

Maria Wirtemberska; Ursula Phillips — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

First published in Warsaw in 1816, Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition has been largely—and unjustly—ignored by the Polish literary canon. Ingeniously structured and vividly related by a Tristram Shandy-esque narrator, Maria Wirtemberska’s psychologically complex work is often considered Poland’s first modern novel.This splendid translation by Ursula Phillips should restore Wirtemberska to her rightful place in the literary pantheon while providing fertile new ground for the study of the international development of the novel.

The romantic story of the young widow Malvina and her mysterious lover Ludomir, Malvina combines several literary styles and influences—from the epistolary to the Gothic. Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz argues that Malvina is quintessentially a sentimental novel—a model of the genre whose chief aspiration is to promote a change in sensibility and inspire new forces of feeling and imagination. For this reason Wirtemberska may be compared to her English contemporary, Jane Austen.

A work of genuine artistic daring and sophistication, Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition has been overlooked by critics for too long, and readers have been denied the pleasure of reading one of literature’s major landmarks—until now.

Wanted: Elevator Man

Joseph G. Peterson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Balladeer of the city’s broken and forgotten men, Joseph G. Peterson looks for inspiration in urban side streets and alleys, where crooked schemes are hatched, where lives end violently, and where pretty much everyone is up to no good. Depicting the lives of people who have woefully lost their way in the world—criminals and victims, the unemployed and unemployable, the neglected and the indigent, the lonely and the alone—Peterson nonetheless brings a poet’s touch to his work, which is redolent with allegory, allusion, and Nabokovian wordplay. His last novel, Beautiful Piece, garnered praise from across the literary spectrum. Enter Wanted: Elevator Man, his powerful and ambitious new novel and the story of Eliot Barnes Jr., a man at the end of his proverbial rope.

Haunted by the larger-than-life shadow of his father, a scientist who may have helped develop the atomic bomb, twenty-nine-year-old Eliot Barnes, Jr., is an apple that’s fallen far from the tree. Saddled with a useless degree in literature, caged in a rundown apartment he can’t afford, and embittered by his failure to live up to the future’s promise, Barnes, who dreams of a corner office—an aerie roost high above the city, working with the higher-ups—begrudgingly accepts a job as an elevator man in a downtown Chicago skyscraper. Thus begins a profound but comedic meditation on failure in this life, how one comes to terms with not achieving one’s dreams, the nature and origin of such dreams, and, fittingly, the meaning of the American dream itself.

As unflinching as Nelson Algren and as romantic as Saul Bellow, Peterson’s novel boasts wildly surreal plot twists and a lethal wit that frequently erupts into full-on hilarity. Wanted: Elevator Man is the perfect tale for learning to cope with diminished expectations in these dark and desperate times.

Herbs

Gary Allen — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Salsa and guacamole wouldn’t be the same without cilantro, and you can’t make pizza without oregano or a mojito without mint. You can use peppermint to settle an upset stomach, ease arthritis pain with stinging nettle, and heal burns and wounds with aloe vera. And then there is cannabis—perhaps the most notorious and divisive herb of all. Despite the fact that herbs are often little more than weeds, cultures around the globe have found hundreds of uses for them, employing them in everything from ancient medicines to savory dishes. While much has been written on cooking and healing with herbs, little has been told about the history of the plants themselves and the incredible journeys they have made.

This book elucidates how these often overlooked plants have become a staple in our lives. Unlike spices that quickly traversed the globe through trade, Gary Allen shows that herbs were often hoarded by their cultivators and were central to distinctive regional dishes. He draws on his extensive knowledge of food history to examine herbs in new ways, making Herbs essential reading for any serious foodie. Filled with beautiful illustrations and delicious recipes, this book will complete the kitchen library.

Rum

Richard Foss — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” A favorite of pirates, the molasses-colored liquid brings to mind clear blue seas, weather-beaten sailors, and port cities filled with bar wenches. But enjoyment of rum spread far beyond the scallywags of the Caribbean—Charles Dickens savored it in punch, Thomas Jefferson mixed it into omelets, Queen Victoria sipped it in navy grog, and the Kamehameha Kings of Hawaii drank it straight up. In Rum,Richard Foss tells the colorful, secret history of a spirit that not only helped spark the American Revolution but was even used as currency in Australia.

This book chronicles the five-hundred-year evolution of rum from a raw spirit concocted for slaves to a beverage savored by connoisseurs. Charting the drink’s history, Foss shows how rum left its mark on religious rituals—it remains a sacramental offering among voodoo worshippers—and became part of popular songs and other cultural landmarks. He also includes recipes for sweet and savory rum dishes and obscure drinks, as well as illustrations of rum memorabilia from its earliest days to the tiki craze of the 1950s. Fast-paced and well written, Rum will delight any fan of mojitos and mai tais.

Victory Over the Sun

Rosamund Bartlett; Sarah Dadswell — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The futurist opera Victory Over the Sun—written by Aleksei Kruchenykh and first performed in St. Petersburg in December 1913—was central to the Russian avant-garde, important for its libretto, its fragmentary, modernistic score, and its innovative sets and costumes. This book features an excellent translation of the text, accompanied by a number of essays from international contributors such as Laurence Senelick and John E. Bowlt that offer new insights into the practice and history of Russian theater in the first half of the twentieth century.

Deadly Season

Kevin M. Simmons; Daniel Sutter — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In 2011, despite continued developments in forecasting, tracking, and warning technology, the United States was hit by the deadliest tornado season in decades. More than 1,200 tornadoes touched down, shattering communities and their safety nets, and killing more than 500 people—a death toll unmatched since 1953.

Drawing on the unique analysis described in their first book, Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes, economists Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter here examine the factors that contributed to the outcomes of such tornadoes as the mid-April outbreak that devastated communities in North Carolina, the “Super Outbreak” across the southern and eastern United States in late April, and the single, mile-wide funnel that touched down in Joplin, Missouri, in late May. In the course of their study the authors identify patterns and anomalies, and reconsider previous assertions about the effectiveness of the Doppler radar and storm warning systems. Their conclusions, as well their assessment of early recovery efforts, are aimed at helping community leaders and policy-makers keep vulnerable populations safer in the future.

Being Danish

Richard Jenkins — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In Being Danish, Richard Jenkins offers a comprehensive, up-to-date look at modern Danish culture. Looking first at a small Danish town in the 1990s, he tracks how the idea of what it means to be Danish has evolved, moving through the 1990s to the 2005 controversy regarding the depiction of Muhammed in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten to the 2011 parliamentary election. Drawing on extensive archival material alongside ethnographic fieldwork, Jenkins explores topics such as the country’s relationship to the European Union, cultural symbolism, the role of Christianity, and the impact of a recent arrival of largely Islamic immigrants. Not a Dane himself, Jenkins offers an outsider’s look at a relatively small but otherwise hugely visible and sociopolitically fascinating country.

Legal Stagings

Kjell Å Modéer; Martin Sunnqvist — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

As contemporary culture becomes increasingly visual, new challenges and requirements arise for institutions that have historically been text-based. One of the most important institutions facing this challenge is that of law. A collection of articles written by lawyers and scholars in a variety of fields, Legal Stagings examines the many visual representations law has assumed across a multitude of scholarly disciplines and artistic genres, including architecture, theatre, cinema, literature, and journalism, as well as in courtroom art and portraiture. Mixing theoretical analysis with practical experiences, the articles here examine not only how law contributes to visual culture but how that culture in turn analyzes, maintains, criticizes, and ultimately transforms law.

Sound of Indo-European

Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

One of the most detailed and comprehensive studies of Indo-European phonology, The Sound of Indo-European brings together leading linguists working in Indo-European studies to examine both the broadest definitions of the group—from minute phonetics to abstract levels of phonemics centering on all varieties of Indo-European—and individual branches, with contributions on Celtic, Anatolian, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic, Armenian, and even Euphratic.

Photography and Landscape

Rod Giblett; Juha Tolonen — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

With a focus on the settler societies of the United States and Australia, Photography and Landscape is a new critical account of landscape photography created through a unique collaboration between a photography writer and a landscape photographer. Beginning with the frontier days of the American West, the subsequent century-long popularity of landscape photography is exemplified by images from Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams, the New Topographics to Richard Misrach, all of whose works are considered here. Along with discussions of other contemporary photographers, this extensively illustrated volume demonstrates the influence of settler societies on landscape photography, in which skilled photographers captured the fascination with and the appeal of the land and its expanse.

The latest installment in Intellect’s Critical Photography series, Photography and Landscape is a visually striking introduction to one of the most important modes of photography.

Habitus of the Hood

Chris Richardson; Hans A Skott-Myhre — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Since the 1990s, popular culture the world over has frequently looked to the ’hood for inspiration, whether in music, film, or television. Habitus of the Hood explores the myriad ways in which the hood has been conceived—both within the lived experiences of its residents and in the many mediated representations found in popular culture. Using a variety of methodologies including autoethnography, textual studies, and critical discourse analysis, contributors analyze and connect these various conceptions.

Flesh Into Light

Robert A. Haller — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Over her more than four-decade career, New York-based filmmaker, performer, and writer Amy Greenfield has achieved widespread critical acclaim for her genre-bending experimental films—from Antigone/Rites Of Passion to her major new live multimedia work, Club Midnight: Flesh Into Light. Exploring the dynamism of movement and the resilience of the human spirit, Greenfield is the originator of—and remains the most prolific contributor to—a new film-dance movement that has as its primary inspirations cinema, human movement, and fundamental artistic strength.

An innovative exploration of an artist whom Cineaste called “the most important practitioner of experimental film-dance,” Flesh Into Light covers Greenfield’s entire career and draws attention to the more than thirty films, holographic sculptures, and video installations of this important American artist.

Mongol Conquests in World History

Timothy May — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Mongol Empire can be seen as marking the beginning of the modern age, and of globalization as well. While communications between the extremes of Eurasia existed prior to the Mongols, they were infrequent and often through intermediaries. As this new book by Timothy May shows, the rise of the Mongol Empire changed everything—through their conquests the Mongols swept away dozens of empires and kingdoms and replaced them with the largest contiguous empire in history.

While the Mongols were an extremely destructive force in the premodern world, the Mongol Empire had stabilizing effects on the social, cultural and economic life of the inhabitants of the vast territory, allowing merchants and missionaries to transverse Eurasia. The Mongol Conquests in World History examines the many ways in which the conquests were a catalyst for change, including changes and advancements in warfare, food, culture, and scientific knowledge. Even as Mongol power declined, the memory of the Empire fired the collective imagination of the region into far-reaching endeavors, such as the desire for luxury goods and spices that launched Columbus’s voyage and the innovations in art that were manifested in the masterpieces of the Renaissance.

This fascinating book offers comprehensive coverage of the entire empire, rather than a more regional approach, and provides an extensive survey of the legacy of the Mongol Empire.

Vodka

Patricia Herlihy — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Vodka is the most versatile of spirits. While people in Eastern Europe and the Baltic often drink it neat, swallowing it in one gulp, others use it in cocktails and mixed drinks—bloody marys, screwdrivers, white russians, and Jell-O shots—or mix it with tonic water or ginger beer to create a refreshing drink. Vodka manufacturers even infuse it with flavors ranging from lemon and strawberry to chocolate, bubble gum, and bacon. Created by distilling fermented grains, potatoes, beets, or other vegetables, this colorless, tasteless, and odorless liquor has been enjoyed by both the rich and the poor throughout its existence, but it has also endured many obstacles along its way to global popularity.

In this book, Patricia Herlihy takes us for a ride through vodka’s history, from its mysterious origins in a Slavic country in the fourteenth century to its current transatlantic reign over Europe and North America. She reveals how it continued to flourish despite hurdles like American Prohibition and being banned in Russia on the eve of World War I. On its way to global domination, vodka became ingrained in Eastern European culture, especially in Russia, where standards in vodka production were first set. Illustrated with photographs, paintings, and graphic art, Vodka will catch the eye of any reader intrigued by how “potato juice” became an international industry.

Gin

Lesley Jacobs Solmonson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Mother’s Milk, Mother’s Ruin, and Ladies’ Delight. Dutch Courage and Cuckold’s Comfort. These evocative nicknames for gin hint that it has a far livelier history than the simple and classic martini would lead you to believe. In this book, Lesley Jacobs Solmonson journeys into gin’s past, revealing that this spirit has played the role of both hero and villain throughout history.

Taking us back to gin’s origins as a medicine derived from the aromatic juniper berry, Solmonson describes how the Dutch recognized the berry’s alcoholic possibilities and distilled it into the whiskey-like genever. She then follows the drink to Britain, where cheap imitations laced with turpentine and other caustic fillers made it the drink of choice for poor eighteenth-century Londoners. Eventually replaced by the sweetened Old Tom style and later by London Dry gin, its popularity spread along with the British Empire. As people today once again embrace classic cocktails like the gimlet and the negroni, gin has reclaimed its place in the world of mixology. Featuring many enticing recipes, Gin is the perfect gift for cocktail aficionados and anyone who wants to know whether it should be shaken or stirred.

Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road

G. H. Bennett — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In 2006 a long-forgotten canister of film was discovered in a church in Devon, a county located in the southwestern corner of the United Kingdom. No one knew how it had gotten there, but its contents were tantalizing—the grainy black and white footage showed members of the German SS and police building a road in Ukraine and Crimea in 1943. The BBC caused a sensation when it aired the footage, but the film gave few clues to the protagonists or their task.

World War II historian G. H. Bennett pieces together the story of the film and its principal characters in The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road. In his search for answers, Bennett unearthed an overlooked chapter of the Holocaust: a wartime German road-building project led by Walter Gieseke, the Nazi policeman who ended up running the SS task force, that served the dual purpose of exterminating Jewish and other lives while laying the infrastructure for a utopian Nazi haven in the Ukraine. Bennett tells the story of the road and its builders through the experiences of Arnold Daghani, a Romanian artist who was one of the few Jewish laborers to survive the project. Daghani describes the brutal treatment he endured, as well as the beating, torture, and murder of his fellow laborers by the Nazis, and his postwar efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Recovering an important but lost episode in the history of World War II and the Holocaust, The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road is a moving and at times horrifying chronicle of suffering, deprivation, and survival.

School, Society, and State

Tracy L. Steffes — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

“Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife,” wrote John Dewey in his classic work The School and Society. In School, Society, and State, Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940.

American public schooling, Steffes shows, was not merely another reform project of the Progressive Era, but a central one. She addresses why Americans invested in public education and explains how an array of reformers subtly transformed schooling into a tool of social governance to address the consequences of industrialization and urbanization. By extending the reach of schools, broadening their mandate, and expanding their authority over the well-being of children, the state assumed a defining role in the education—and in the lives—of American families.

In School, Society, and State, Steffes returns the state to the study of the history of education and brings the schools back into our discussion of state power during a pivotal moment in American political development.

Directory of World Cinema: China

Gary Bettinson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Commended for their social relevance and artistic value, Chinese films remain at the forefront of international cinema, bolstered in recent years by a new generation of talented young filmmakers. Directory of World Cinema: China presents an accessible overview of the definitive films of Hong Kong and mainland China, with particular attention to the achievements of prolific industry figures, the burgeoning independent sector, and the embrace of avant-garde practices of art cinema. Spanning a variety of characteristic genres, including horror, heroic bloodshed, romantic comedy, and kung-fu, reviews cover individual titles in considerable depth and are accompanied by a selection of full-color film stills. A comprehensive filmography and a bibliography of recommended reading complete this essential companion to Chinese cinema.

Ferraris for all

Daniel Ben-Ami — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The growth of the economy and the spread of prosperity are increasingly seen as problematic rather than positive. They are accused of encouraging greed, damaging the environment, causing unhappiness and widening social inequalities. The mainstream acceptance of these views is a trend Daniel Ben-Ami has termed 'growth scepticism'.Ferraris for all is a rejoinder to the growth sceptics. Using examples from a range of countries, the author argues that society as a whole benefits from greater affluence. Action is needed - not to limit prosperity, but to encourage creativity and growth in resolving the problems of poverty, inequality and the environment, to increase abundance and to spread it worldwide.Lively and provocative, this timely book will trigger debate and dissent in equal measure."An exceptional and much needed book." Angus Kennedy, Culture Wars

Orthodox Russia in Crisis

Isaiah Gruber — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A pivotal period in Russian history, the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century has taken on new resonance in the country’s post-Soviet search for new national narratives. The historical role of the Orthodox Church has emerged as a key theme in contemporary remembrances of this time—but what precisely was that role?

The first comprehensive study of the Church during the Troubles, Orthodox Russia in Crisis reconstructs this tumultuous time, offering new interpretations of familiar episodes while delving deep into the archives to uncover a much fuller picture of the era. Analyzing these sources, Isaiah Gruber argues that the business activity of monasteries played a significant role in the origins and course of the Troubles and that frequent changes in power forced Church ideologues to innovate politically, for example inventing new justifications for power to be granted to the people and to royal women. These new ideas, Gruber contends, ultimately helped bring about a new age in Russian spiritual life and a crystallization of the national mentality.

Touring the Screen

Alfio Leotta — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Following the success of prominent feature films shot on location, including Tolkien’s wildly popular The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand boasts an impressive film tourism industry. This book examines the relationship between New Zealand’s cinematic representation—as both a vast expanse of natural beauty and a magical world of fantasy on screen—and its tourism imagery, including the ways in which savvy local tourism boards have in recent decades used the country’s film representations to sell New Zealand as a premiere travel destination. Focusing on the films that have had a strong impact on marketing strategies by local tourist boards, Touring the Screen will be of interest to all those working and studying in the fields of cinema, postcolonial history, and tourism studies.

Cartoons of the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda

Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Gouda cartoons are the original designs for the stained glass windows of the city’s main church. This volume provides the first complete overview of these sketches, which date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The editors have collected images of all the surviving cartoons, as well as essays that delve into the lives and tools of draughtsmen during this period, and provides new information on early modern glazing techniques. A full description of the restoration efforts over the past centuries, as well as the recent conservation finished in 2011, make The Cartoons of the Sint Janskerk in Gouda an impressively comprehensive account of these extraordinary sketches.

In Hock

Wendy A. Woloson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation’s founding through the Great Depression, In Hock demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic tide could make ends meet only, Wendy Woloson argues, by regularly pawning household objects to supplement inadequate wages. Nonetheless, businessmen, reformers, and cultural critics claimed that pawnshops promoted vice, and employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to cast their proprietors as greedy and cold-hearted. Using personal correspondence, business records, and other rich archival sources to uncover the truth behind the rhetoric, Woloson brings to life a diverse cast of characters and shows that pawnbrokers were in fact shrewd businessmen, often from humble origins, who possessed sophisticated knowledge of a wide range of goods in various resale markets.

A much-needed new look at a misunderstood institution, In Hock is both a first-rate academic study of a largely ignored facet of the capitalist economy and a resonant portrait of the economic struggles of generations of Americans.

Italian TV Drama and Beyond

Milly Buonanno — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Since its inception in the mid-1950s, the television drama has emerged as the dominant medium of contemporary storytelling in Italian society, with a steadily increasing supply of locally produced domestic dramas offering up competing versions of Italian identity. Informed by the nation’s rich historical and cultural heritage—as well as a string of notable foreign imports—the narratives discussed here offer much insight into Italian society and highlight the wide array of television programming available outside of Britain and the United States.

Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling

Andrew L. Jenks — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

“Let’s go!” With that, the boyish, grinning Yuri Gagarin launched into space on April 12, 1961, becoming the first human being to exit Earth’s orbit. The twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant colonel departed for the stars from within the shadowy world of the Soviet military-industrial complex. Barbed wires, no-entry placards, armed guards, false identities, mendacious maps, and a myriad of secret signs had hidden Gagarin from prying outsiders—not even his friends or family knew what he had been up to. Coming less than four years after the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit, Gagarin’s voyage was cause for another round of capitalist shock and Soviet rejoicing.

The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling relates this twentieth-century icon’s remarkable life while exploring the fascinating world of Soviet culture. Gagarin’s flight brought him massive international fame—in the early 1960s, he was possibly the most photographed person in the world, flashing his trademark smile while rubbing elbows with the varied likes of Nehru, Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, and Italian sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida. Outside of the spotlight, Andrew L. Jenks reveals, his tragic and mysterious death in a jet crash became fodder for morality tales and conspiracy theories in his home country, and, long after his demise, his life continues to provide grist for the Russian popular-culture mill.

This is the story of a legend, both the official one and the one of myth, which reflected the fantasies, perversions, hopes and dreams of Gagarin’s fellow Russians. With this rich, lively chronicle of Gagarin’s life and times, Jenks recreates the elaborately secretive world of space-age Russia while providing insights into Soviet history that will captivate a range of readers.

Integrative Habit of Mind

Frederick D. Aquino — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Searching for better ways to inspire people to pursue wisdom, Frederick D. Aquino argues that teachers and researchers should focus less on state-of-the-art techniques and learning outcomes and instead pay more attention to the intellectual formation of their students. We should, Aquino contends, encourage the development of an integrative habit of mind, which entails cultivating the capacity to grasp how various pieces of data and areas of inquiry fit together and to understand how to apply this information to new situations.

To fully explore this notion, An Integrative Habit of Mind brings the work of the great religious figure and educator John Henry Newman into fruitful conversation with recent philosophical developments in epistemology, cognition, and education. Aquino unearths some crucial but neglected themes from Newman’s writings and carries them forward into the contemporary context, revealing how his ideas can help us broaden our horizons, render apt judgments, and better understand our world and how we think about it.

Olympic Visions

Mike O'Mahony — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

African American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting racial segregation in the United States in 1968. Hitler watching the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Michael Phelps’ photo finish in the 100-meter butterfly to win his seventh of a record eight medals in 2008. Since its creation in 1896, the Olympic Games have produced iconic images such as these, from the second the Olympic flame is lit at the lavish opening ceremony to the moment that same flame is extinguished at its close. As billions across the globe watch this showcase of fitness, strength, and skill, few understand how the pictorial legacy of the Games continues to shape the way the events are viewed today.

Olympic Visions explores how painters and sculptors, photographers and filmmakers, and architects and designers have helped to affect the consciousness of spectators around the world. Mike O’Mahony describes and analyzes images such as documentary photographs and posters made of the Olympics throughout history. He also looks at the many special objects, including coins, medals, and sculptures, that have been made to commemorate the games. His detailed insights into the world of Olympic artifacts, combined with the beautiful illustrations included here, present a crucial addition to our understanding of the games and the way we watch them.

With the next Olympic Games beginning in London in July, Olympic Visions will be an essential companion to viewers tuning in to cheer on their national teams to triumph and glory.

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic

Ardel Haefele-Thomas — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In Queer Others in Victorian Gothic, Ardel Haefele-Thomas examines a number of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Gothic novels, short stories, and films through the lens of queer cultural studies. In some of these works, as Haefele-Thomas demonstrates, the author or filmmaker fully intended to explore the complicated landscape of queer sexuality and gender identity. In most, however, the author or filmmaker’s intentions are unclear.

Haefele-Thomas takes on these works, first employing “queer” in its nineteenth-century historical context, to point to their generally weird, odd, or ill components. She then explores them using “queer” in the complex and politically charged context from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Haefele-Thomas argues that part of what makes these texts Gothic are their covert queer content. She also reveals that queer theory—lacking the gender specificity found in gay and lesbian theories and historiographies—allows room to convey gender, sexuality, race, class, and familial structures in a specific state of anti-categorization. Queers Others in Victorian Gothic will appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of gender, sexuality, and literary criticism.

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic

Ardel Haefele-Thomas — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Queer Uncanny

Paulina Palmer — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Queer Uncanny investigates the roles played by the concept of the uncanny, as defined by Sigmund Freud and other theorists, in representing lesbian, gay, and transgender characters in a selection of British, American, and Caribbean fiction published between 1980 and 2007. Paulina Palmer analyzes novels by Christopher Bram, Philip Hensher, Alan Hollingurst, Randall Kenan, Shani Mootoo, Sarah Schulman, Ali Smith, Sarah Waters, and Jeanette Winterson, among others, highlighting the inventive ways these authors recast traditional Gothic motifs from a queer perspective. Topics discussed include secrets and their disclosure, queer spectrality, the homely/unhomely house, the grotesque, lesbian social invisibility, transgender doubles, and the intersection between sexuality and race.

Evolutionary Restraints

Mark E. Borrello — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Much of the evolutionary debate since Darwin has focused on the level at which natural selection occurs. Most biologists acknowledge multiple levels of selection—from the gene to the species. The debate about group selection, however, is the focus of Mark E. Borrello’s Evolutionary Restraints.

Tracing the history of biological attempts to determine whether selection leads to the evolution of fitter groups, Borrello takes as his focus the British naturalist V. C. Wynne-Edwards, who proposed that animals could regulate their own populations and thus avoid overexploitation of their resources. By the mid-twentieth century, Wynne-Edwards became an advocate for group selection theory and led a debate that engaged the most significant evolutionary biologists of his time, including Ernst Mayr, G. C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins. This important dialogue bled out into broader conversations about population regulation, environmental crises, and the evolution of human social behavior. By examining a single facet in the long debate about evolution, Borrello provides powerful insight into an intellectual quandary that remains relevant and alive to this day.

Contingency in Madagascar

Stephen Muecke; Alfredo Cramerotti; Max Pam — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

As they set off for Madagascar in 2003, photographer Max Pam and writer Stephen Muecke adopted as their guiding principle the idea of contingency—central to which is the conscious embrace of risk and chance. In doing so, they established a new aesthetic in which image and text are inextricably linked to the notion of possibility. This stunning collection of photos and essays is the result of their vision, collectively illustrating the beauty and wisdom on offer in one of the world’s poorest nations. A contribution to the wave of new ethnography exemplified by Michael Taussig and Kathleen Stewart, these encounters with events, images, and experimental writing dramatize thoughts and feelings in the ongoing construction of place.

Family Farm

Robert L. Switzer — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

During the past century two-thirds of all family-operated farms in America disappeared. A Family Farm is the personal story of one such farm from 1916 to 1991, told from the perspectives of four generations. The story begins with the author’s grandparents, whose primitive way of farming in northern Illinois, described in evocative detail, was closer to the nineteenth century than to the twentieth. Their daughter, the author’s mother, loses her hopes for a scholarly life during the Great Depression, and—though bookish and unsuited to farm life—returns to the farm with her husband, who describes in his own words his youthful years on a poor Illinois farm and as a rural schoolteacher. The family attempts to modernize the old farm and introduce up-to-date agricultural techniques, but their sons, the author and his brother, leave the farm after high school and unwittingly doom it to failure. It is the author’s children who provide a brighter perspective, delighting in visits to their grandparents’ farm even as they grow aware of its decline. A Family Farm ends with an elegiac description of death and of the winter auction at which the accumulation of seventy-five years of hard work and frugal living is sold to the highest bidder.

Richly illustrated with art work, photographs, and documents, and set within the context of current trends in agricultural economics and rural life, A Family Farm offers an intimate and historical perspective on a now vanished way of life.

Knowledge, Policy and Power in International Development

Harry Jones; Nicola Jones; Louise Shaxson; David Walker — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

An illuminating look at the relationship between knowledge, policy, and power, this book scrutinizes the problems that hamper attempts to bring knowledge to bear on policy, such as difficulties in analyzing political contexts, persistent power imbalances between involved parties, ignorance of different types of knowledge, and misconceptions of the role of intermediaries. Most importantly, the authors provide strategies for negotiating this complex terrain, allowing readers to contribute to policy discussions, influence policy change, and implement policies and programs more effectively.

Knowledge, Policy and Power in International Development

Harry Jones; Nicola Jones; Louise Shaxson; David Walker — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Iranian Cinema and Globalization

Shahab Esfandiary — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Despite critical acclaim and a recent surge of popularity with Western audiences, Iranian cinema has been the subject of lamentably few academic studies—and those have by and large been limited to the films and filmmakers most visible on the international film circuit. Iranian Cinema and Globalization seeks to broaden readers’ exposure to other dimensions of Iranian cinema, including the works of the many prolific filmmakers whose films have received little outside attention despite being widely popular within Iran. Combining theories of globalization and national cinema with in-depth, interdisciplinary analyses of individual films, this volume expands the current literature on Iranian cinema with insights into the social, and religious political contexts involved.

International Approaches to Rape

Nicole Westmarland; Geetanjali Gangoli — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

International Approaches to Rape gives an overview of rape law and policy in nine different countries, including the United States and Canada. Many governments have begun to take rape more seriously than in the past and have started to implement wide-ranging reforms; this book describes those reforms and assesses the degree to which they have been successful. Introducing readers to various national perspectives on rape, the contributors outline a comparative approach that highlights the similarities and differences between countries, contexts, laws, issues, policies, and interventions.

My Father's Name

Lawrence P. Jackson — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Armed with only early boyhood memories, Lawrence P. Jackson begins his quest by setting out from his home in Baltimore for Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to find his late grandfather’s old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs. My Father’s Name tells the tale of the ensuing journey, at once a detective story and a moving historical memoir, uncovering the mixture of anguish and fulfillment that accompanies a venture into the ancestral past, specifically one tied to the history of slavery.

After asking around in Pittsylvania County and carefully putting the pieces together, Jackson finds himself in the house of distant relations. In the pages that follow, he becomes increasingly absorbed by the search for his ancestors and increasingly aware of how few generations an African American needs to map back in order to arrive at slavery, “a door of no return.” Ultimately, Jackson’s dogged research in libraries, census records, and courthouse registries enables him to trace his family to his grandfather’s grandfather, a man who was born or sold into slavery but who, when Federal troops abandoned the South in 1877, was able to buy forty acres of land. In this intimate study of a black Virginia family and neighborhood, Jackson vividly reconstructs moments in the lives of his father’s grandfather, Edward Jackson, and great-grandfather, Granville Hundley, and gives life to revealing narratives of Pittsylvania County, recalling both the horror of slavery and the later struggles of postbellum freedom.
My Father’s Name is a family story full of twists and turns—and one of haunting familiarity to many Americans, who may question whether the promises of emancipation have ever truly been fulfilled. It is also a resolute look at the duties that come with reclaiming and honoring Americans who survived slavery and a thoughtful meditation on its painful and enduring history.

Floating Gold

Christopher Kemp — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

“Preternaturally hardened whale dung” is not the first image that comes to mind when we think of perfume, otherwise a symbol of glamour and allure. But the key ingredient that makes the sophisticated scent linger on the skin is precisely this bizarre digestive by-product—ambergris. Despite being one of the world’s most expensive substances (its value is nearly that of gold and has at times in history been triple it), ambergris is also one of the world’s least known. But with this unusual and highly alluring book, Christopher Kemp promises to change that by uncovering the unique history of ambergris.

A rare secretion produced only by sperm whales, which have a fondness for squid but an inability to digest their beaks, ambergris is expelled at sea and floats on ocean currents for years, slowly transforming, before it sometimes washes ashore looking like a nondescript waxy pebble. It can appear almost anywhere but is found so rarely, it might as well appear nowhere. Kemp’s journey begins with an encounter on a New Zealand beach with a giant lump of faux ambergris—determined after much excitement to nothing more exotic than lard—that inspires a comprehensive quest to seek out ambergris and its story. He takes us from the wild, rocky New Zealand coastline to Stewart Island, a remote, windswept island in the southern seas, to Boston and Cape Cod, and back again. Along the way, he tracks down the secretive collectors and traders who populate the clandestine modern-day ambergris trade.

Floating Gold is an entertaining and lively history that covers not only these precious gray lumps and those who covet them, but presents a highly informative account of the natural history of whales, squid, ocean ecology, and even a history of the perfume industry. Kemp’s obsessive curiosity is infectious, and eager readers will feel as though they have stumbled upon a precious bounty of this intriguing substance.

Memorial Mania

Erika Doss — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In the past few decades, thousands of new memorials to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism have dotted the American landscape. Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In Memorial Mania, Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express—and claim—those issues in visibly public contexts.

Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today.

Mapping Europe's Borderlands

Steven Seegel — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The simplest purpose of a map is a rational one: to educate, to solve a problem, to point someone in the right direction. Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book.

Mapping Europe’s Borderlands takes the familiar problems of state and nation building in eastern Europe and presents them through an entirely new prism, that of cartography and cartographers. Drawing from sources in eleven languages, including military, historical-pedagogical, and ethnographic maps, as well as geographic texts and related cartographic literature, Seegel explores the role of maps and mapmakers in the East Central European borderlands from the Enlightenment to the Treaty of Versailles. For example, Seegel explains how Russia used cartography in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and, later, formed its geography society as a cover for gathering intelligence. He also explains the importance of maps to the formation of identities and institutions in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, as well as in Russia. Seegel concludes with a consideration of the impact of cartographers’ regional and socioeconomic backgrounds, educations, families, career options, and available language choices.

Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community

Bernard Yack — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Nationalism is one of modern history’s great surprises. How is it that the nation, a relatively old form of community, has risen to such prominence in an era so strongly identified with the individual? Bernard Yack argues that it is the inadequacy of our understanding of community—and especially the moral psychology that animates it—that has made this question so difficult to answer.

Yack develops a broader and more flexible theory of community and shows how to use it in the study of nations and nationalism. What makes nationalism such a powerful and morally problematic force in our lives is the interplay of old feelings of communal loyalty and relatively new beliefs about popular sovereignty. By uncovering this fraught relationship, Yack moves our understanding of nationalism beyond the oft-rehearsed debate between primordialists and modernists, those who exaggerate our loss of individuality and those who underestimate the depth of communal attachments.

A brilliant and compelling book, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community sets out a revisionist conception of nationalism that cannot be ignored.

Transformative Political Leadership

Robert I. Rotberg — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Accomplished political leaders have a clear strategy for turning political visions into reality. Through well-honed analytical, political, and emotional intelligence, leaders chart paths to promising futures that include economic growth, material prosperity, and human well-being. Alas, such leaders are rare in the developing world, where often institutions are weak and greed and corruption strong—and where responsible leadership therefore has the potential to effect the greatest change.

In Transformative Political Leadership, Robert I. Rotberg focuses on the role of leadership in politics and argues that accomplished leaders demonstrate a particular set of skills. Through illustrative case studies of leaders who have performed ably in the developing world—among them Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Seretse Khama in Botswana, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, and Kemal Ataturk in Turkey—Rotberg examines how these leaders transformed their respective countries. The importance of capable leadership is woefully understudied in political science, and this book will be an important tool in exploring how leaders lead and how nations and institutions are built.

Transformative Political Leadership

Robert I. Rotberg — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Putting On Virtue

Jennifer A. Herdt — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. Putting On Virtue reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought.

Jennifer Herdt develops her claims through an argument of broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, Putting On Virtue traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence.

Images in Spite of All

Georges Didi-Huberman; Shane B. Lillis — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Of one and a half million surviving photographs related to Nazi concentration camps, only four depict the actual process of mass killing perpetrated at the gas chambers. Images in Spite of All reveals that these rare photos of Auschwitz, taken clandestinely by one of the Jewish prisoners forced to help carry out the atrocities there, were made as a potent act of resistance.
Available today because they were smuggled out of the camp and into the hands of Polish resistance fighters, the photographs show a group of naked women being herded into the gas chambers and the cremation of corpses that have just been pulled out. Georges Didi-Huberman’s relentless consideration of these harrowing scenes demonstrates how Holocaust testimony can shift from texts and imaginations to irrefutable images that attempt to speak the unspeakable. Including a powerful response to those who have criticized his interest in these images as voyeuristic, Didi-Huberman’s eloquent reflections constitute an invaluable contribution to debates over the representability of the Holocaust and the status of archival photographs in an image-saturated world.

American Sunshine

Daniel Freund — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis.

In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century. Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America’s new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.

Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory

David B. Malament — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory, David B. Malament presents the basic logical-mathematical structure of general relativity and considers a number of special topics concerning the foundations of general relativity and its relation to Newtonian gravitation theory. These special topics include the geometrized formulation of Newtonian theory (also known as Newton-Cartan theory), the concept of rotation in general relativity, and Gödel spacetime. One of the highlights of the book is a no-go theorem that can be understood to show that there is no criterion of orbital rotation in general relativity that fully answers to our classical intuitions. Topics is intended for both students and researchers in mathematical physics and philosophy of science.

Chicago Companion to Tocqueville's Democracy in America

James T. Schleifer — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

One of the greatest books ever to be written on the United States, Democracy in America continues to find new readers who marvel at the lasting insights Alexis de Tocqueville had into our nation and its political culture. The work is, however, as challenging as it is important; its arguments can be complex and subtle, and its sheer length can make it difficult for any reader, especially one coming to it for the first time, to grasp Tocqueville’s meaning. The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is the first book written expressly to help general readers and students alike get the most out of this seminal work.

Now James T. Schleifer, an expert on Tocqueville, has provided the background and information readers need in order to understand Tocqueville’s masterwork. In clear and engaging prose, Schleifer explains why Democracy in America is so important, how it came to be written, and how different generations of Americans have interpreted it since its publication. He also presents indispensable insight on who Tocqueville was, his trip to America, and what he meant by equality, democracy, and liberty.

Drawing upon his intimate knowledge of Tocqueville’s papers and manuscripts, Schleifer reveals how Tocqueville’s ideas took shape and changed even in the course of writing the book. At the same time, Schleifer provides a detailed glossary of key terms and key passages, all accompanied by generous citations to the relevant pages in the University of Chicago Press Mansfield/Winthrop translation. The Chicago Companion will serve generations of readers as an essential guide to both the man and his work.

Chicago Companion to Tocqueville's Democracy in America

James T. Schleifer — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

After Freud Left

John C. Burnham — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From August 29 to September 21, 1909, Sigmund Freud visited the United States, where he gave five lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. This volume brings together a stunning gallery of leading historians of psychoanalysis and of American culture to consider the broad history of psychoanalysis in America and to reflect on what has happened to Freud’s legacy in the United States in the century since his visit.

There has been a flood of recent scholarship on Freud’s life and on the European and world history of psychoanalysis, but historians have produced relatively little on the proliferation of psychoanalytic thinking in the United States, where Freud’s work had monumental intellectual and social impact. The essays in After Freud Left provide readers with insights and perspectives to help them understand the uniqueness of Americans’ psychoanalytic thinking, as well as the forms in which the legacy of Freud remains active in the United States in the twenty-first century. After Freud Left will be essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American history, general intellectual and cultural history, and psychology and psychiatry.

Renaissance Rediscovery of Intimacy

Kathy Eden — Thu, 03 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In 1345, when Petrarch recovered a lost collection of letters from Cicero to his best friend Atticus, he discovered an intimate Cicero, a man very different from either the well-known orator of the Roman forum or the measured spokesman for the ancient schools of philosophy. It was Petrarch’s encounter with this previously unknown Cicero and his letters that Kathy Eden argues fundamentally changed the way Europeans from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries were expected to read and write.

The Renaissance Rediscovery of Intimacy explores the way ancient epistolary theory and practice were understood and imitated in the European Renaissance.Eden draws chiefly upon Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca—but also upon Plato, Demetrius, Quintilian, and many others—to show how the classical genre of the “familiar” letter emerged centuries later in the intimate styles of Petrarch, Erasmus, and Montaigne. Along the way, she reveals how the complex concept of intimacy in the Renaissance—leveraging the legal, affective, and stylistic dimensions of its prehistory in antiquity—pervades the literary production and reception of the period and sets the course for much that is modern in the literature of subsequent centuries. Eden’s important study will interest students and scholars in a number of areas, including classical, Renaissance, and early modern studies; comparative literature; and the history of reading, rhetoric, and writing.

Doña Barbara

Rómulo Gallegos; Robert Malloy; Larry McMurtry — Thu, 03 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Rómulo Gallegos is best known for being Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. But in his native land he is equally famous as a writer responsible for one of Venezuela’s literary treasures, the novel Doña Barbara. Published in 1929 and all but forgotten by Anglophone readers, Doña Barbara is one of the first examples of magical realism, laying the groundwork for later authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends fantasy, adventure, and romance.

Hailed as “the Bovary of the llano” by Larry McMurtry in his new foreword to this book, Doña Barbarais a magnetic and memorable heroine, who has inspired numerous adaptations on the big and small screens, including a recent television show that aired on Telemundo.

Petrarch

Victoria Kirkham; Armando Maggi — Wed, 02 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Although Francesco Petrarca (1304–74) is best known today for cementing the sonnet’s place in literary history, he was also a philosopher, historian, orator, and one of the foremost classical scholars of his age. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works is the only comprehensive, single-volume source to which anyone—scholar, student, or general reader—can turn for information on each of Petrarch’s works, its place in the poet’s oeuvre, and a critical exposition of its defining features.

A sophisticated but accessible handbook that illuminates Petrarch’s love of classical culture, his devout Christianity, his public celebrity, and his struggle for inner peace, this encyclopedic volume covers both Petrarch’s Italian and Latin writings and the various genres in which he excelled: poem, tract, dialogue, oration, and letter. A biographical introduction and chronology anchor the book, making Petrarch an invaluable resource for specialists in Italian, comparative literature, history, classics, religious studies, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.

NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2011

Jeffrey A. Frankel; Christopher Pissarides — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics brings together leading American and European economists to discuss a broad range of current issues in global macroeconomics. An international companion to the more American-focused NBER Macroeconomics Annual, the distinguished ISoM has met annually in Europe for over thirty years. Papers in this year’s volume fall into three categories: productivity in the international economy; a view of demand stimulus through the lens of the high level of unemployment that most advanced countries experience in the recent global recession; and nominal and real exchange rates.

NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2011

Jeffrey A. Frankel; Christopher Pissarides — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Flora of Tropical East Africa: Commelinaceae

Henk Beentje — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Flora of Tropical East Africa is a descriptive, extensively illustrated account of the flowering plants and ferns native and naturalized in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, together with information on exotic ornamental and crop plants. At least one species of each genus is illustrated, and the bibliography and synonymy are sufficiently detailed to explain the nomenclature and taxonomic circumscriptions within a broad regional context. This part covers the Commelinaceae family.

Rural Ireland

Vera Kreilkamp — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Rural Ireland: The Inside Story is the amply illustrated catalog of the McMullen Museum of Art’s 2012 exhibition of Irish paintings and rural artifacts. Exploring the relationship between Ireland’s visual arts and cultural history during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fifteen contributors—including museum curators, art historians, social and cultural historians, literary critics, a historical archaeologist, and a folklorist—examine the paintings and artifacts of the country’s rural interiors, many of them only recently discovered. A multidisciplinary approach reveals how economically marginalized tenant families arranged their homes, produced textiles and food, purchased goods, conducted business, worshipped, mourned, entertained, and educated themselves. This wide-ranging volume builds on the growing historical and literary exploration of material culture, and it provides new insight into the power of physical objects to offering deeper understanding of their owners’ lives. A visually stunning and profoundly informative collection, Rural Ireland The Inside Story is an important resource for anyone interested in the visual arts and their ability to illuminate the human condition.

Rational Empires

Leo J. Blanken — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The nineteenth century marked the high point of imperialism, when tsarist Russia expanded to the Pacific and the sun was said never to set on the British Empire. Imperialism remains a perennial issue in international relations today, and nowhere is this more evident than in the intensifying competition for global resources.

Leo J. Blanken explains imperialism through an analysis of the institutions of both the expanding state and its targets of conquest. While democratic states favoring free trade generally resort to imperialism only to preempt aggressive rivals—or when they have reason to believe another state’s political institutions will not hold up when making bargains—authoritarian states tend toward imperialism because they don’t stand to benefit from free trade. The result is three distinct strategies toward imperialism: actors fighting over territory, actors peaceably dividing territory among themselves, and actors refraining from seizing territory altogether. Blanken examines these dynamics through three case studies: the scramble for Africa, the unequal treaties imposed on Qing Dynasty China, and the evolution of Britain’s imperial policy in India. By separating out the different types of imperialism, Blanken provides insight into its sources, as well as the potential implications of increased competition in the current international arena.

Buddha in the Yurt

Carmen Meinert — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Since the introduction of Buddhism to Mongolia in the seventeenth century, art has emerged as an important component of Buddhist culture. Drawing on a large privately owned collection of Mongolian and Tibetan art, this volume reproduces a carefully chosen selection of paintings, scrolls, statues, shrines, amulets, tablets, and ritual implements dating as far back as the eleventh century. From Zanabazar’s bronze cast Buddhas to the numerous gorgeous images of Indian siddhas, Tibetan masters, protective deities, and boddhisatvas, the objects reflect the broad scope of artistic influences in Buddhist art ranging from Tibet to the Qing Dynasty in China. Accompanying each illustration and adding depth to the volume are descriptions that situate the work within Buddhist iconography and the rich symbolism of the Tantric Buddhist tradition. At the end of the volumes are comprehensive English and Russian glossaries (and respectively German and Mongolian glossaries with 450 entries each; for all entries the respective translations in four languages are provided (Mongolian, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese).

All of the artworks appear here for the first time in print, making this an essential addition to the literature on East Asian religion, culture, and art.

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2011

Daron Acemoglu; Michael Woodford — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The twenty-sixth edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual continues its tradition of featuring theoretical and empirical contributions that shed light on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics, pushing the frontiers of macroeconomic work in areas ranging from short-run macroeconomic fluctuations to exchange rates, financial regulation, and political economy. As with other recent volumes in this series, this year’s volume features several papers that aim to illuminate the causes of the recent financial crisis and consider policies that might reduce the likelihood of similar crises in the future. Topics include analyses of the sources of asset market bubbles and their macroeconomic consequences, the reconsideration of financial regulation and ways in which it could be improved, exchange-rate determination, and the macroeconomic determinants of unemployment.

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2011

Daron Acemoglu; Michael Woodford — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Afterall

Nuria Enguita Mayo; Pablo Lafuente; Dieter Roelstraete — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Afterall, a journal of art, context and enquiry, offers in-depth considerations of the work of contemporary artists along with essays that broaden how to understand it. Issue 29 looks at the artistic economy and the different means that artists have of approaching the economy as opposed to the market. Essays include examinations of Eugenio Dittborn’s channelling of modes of distribution, Moyra Davey’s investigations into value, Dierck Schmidt’s political and economic histories, R. Kelly's hip-hopera, Trapped in the Closet, and the Chinese exhibition, “This Useful Life.”

Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2011

Josh Lerner; Scott Stern — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Innovation Policy and the Economy provides a forum for research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. The distinguished contributors look at policies that affect the ability of an economy to achieve scientific and technological progress or that shape the impact of science and technology on economic growth. Issues covered in Volume 12 are an exploration of recent events in the U.S. economy and their implications for innovation and growth; a consideration of the role of non-compete agreements in shaping labor market dynamics, the propensity for entrepreneurship, and regional migration; and an empirical analysis of the issues of rapid advance and increased centrality of digital networks and platforms as well as the increasing attention on the role of individual privacy.

Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2011

Josh Lerner; Scott Stern — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Norman Maclean Reader

Norman Maclean; O. Alan Weltzien — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In his eighty-seven years, Norman Maclean played many parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.

The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career.

In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.

Various and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices.

Planet of Viruses

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We are most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or the flu, but viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in caves miles underground.

This fascinating book explores the hidden world of viruses—a world that we all inhabit. Here Carl Zimmer, popular science writer and author of Discover magazine’s award-winning blog The Loom, presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come. In this eye-opening tour of the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life as we know it, we learn that some treatments for the common cold do more harm than good; that the world’s oceans are home to an astonishing number of viruses; and that the evolution of HIV is now in overdrive, spawning more mutated strains than we care to imagine.

The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” A Planet of Viruses is sure to please his many fans and further enhance his reputation as one of America’s most respected and admired science journalists.

Dartmoor's Alluring Uplands

Harold Fox; Matthew Tompkins; Christopher Dyer — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A striking and famous feature of the English landscape, Dartmoor (in the southwest of the country) is a beautiful place, with a sense of wildness and mystery. But in the Middle Ages intensive practical use was made of its resources: its extensive moorlands provided summer pasture for thousands of cattle from the Devon lowlands, which flowed in a seasonal tide, up in the spring and down in the autumn.

This book describes, for the first time, the social organization and farming practices associated with that annual transfer of livestock. It presents evidence for a previously unsuspected Anglo-Saxon period of transhumance, by which the cattle's lowland owners moved with their animals and lived temporarily on the moor every summer.

Dartmoor's Alluring Uplands

Harold Fox; Matthew Tompkins; Christopher Dyer — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Another Freedom

Svetlana Boym — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The word “freedom” is so overly used—and frequently abused—that it is always in danger of becoming nothing but a cliché. In Another Freedom, Svetlana Boym offers us a refreshing new portrait of the age-old concept. Exploring the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece to the present day, she argues that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only “what is” but also “what if.” Beginning with notions of sacrifice and the emergence of a public sphere for politics and art, Boym expands her account to include the relationships between freedom and liberation, modernity and terror, and political dissent and creative estrangement. While depicting a world of differences, she affirms lasting solidarities based on the commitment to the passionate thinking that reflections on freedom require. To do so, Boym assembles a remarkable cast of characters: Aeschylus and Euripides, Kafka and Mandelstam, Arendt and Heidegger, and a virtual encounter between Dostoevsky and Marx on the streets of Paris.

By offering a fresh look at the strange history of this idea, Another Freedom delivers a nuanced portrait of freedom, one whose repercussions will be felt well into the future.

Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn; Ian Hacking — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach.

With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age.

This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context. Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science.

Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn; Ian Hacking — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Wondrous Curiosities

Stephanie Moser — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

When the British Museum opened its doors more than two centuries ago, scores of visitors waited eagerly outside for a first glimpse of ancient relics from Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Even today, in this age of satellite television and high-speed Internet access, museums maintain their unique allure, continuing to play a vital role in connecting us with little-known terrains and the deep mysteries of our historical past. That’s because, as Stephanie Moser argues in Wondrous Curiosities, museum displays don’t just transmit knowledge—they actually create it.

Based on her exploration of the British Museum’s world-famous collection of Egyptian antiquities, this pioneering study reveals the powerful role of museums in shaping our understanding of science, culture, and history. Drawing on guidebooks and archival documents, Moser demonstrates that this British exhibition of ancient Egyptian artifacts was central to the way we came to define the remarkable society that produced them. And she also reveals the specific strategies—such as using pattern and symmetry, juxtaposing different types of objects, and singling out particular items—that the British Museum and others used, and still use, in representing the past. With a wealth of illustrations and a detailed account of how the museum acquired and displayed its Egyptian collections, Wondrous Curiosities will fascinate curators and scholars of British history, Egyptology, art history, archaeology, and the history of science.

Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community

Bernard Yack — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Genealogical Science

Nadia Abu El-Haj — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Genealogical Science analyzes the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. A biological discipline that relies on genetic data in order to reconstruct the geographic origins of contemporary populations—their histories of migration and genealogical connections to other present-day groups—this historical science is garnering ever more credibility and social reach, in large part due to a growing industry in ancestry testing.

In this book, Nadia Abu El-Haj examines genetic history’s working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology, and the individual and the collective. Through the example of the study of Jewish origins, she explores novel cultural and political practices that are emerging as genetic history’s claims and “facts” circulate in the public domain and illustrates how this historical science is intrinsically entangled with cultural imaginations and political commitments. Chronicling late-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century understandings of race, nature, and culture, she identifies continuities and shifts in scientific claims, institutional contexts, and political worlds in order to show how the meanings of biological difference have changed over time. In so doing she gives an account of how and why it is that genetic history is so socially felicitous today and elucidates the range of understandings of the self, individual and collective, this scientific field is making possible. More specifically, through her focus on the history of projects of Jewish self-fashioning that have taken place on the terrain of the biological sciences, The Genealogical Science analyzes genetic history as the latest iteration of a cultural and political practice now over a century old.

Combating Jihadism

Barak Mendelsohn — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Although terrorism is an age-old phenomenon, jihadi ideology is distinctive in its ambition to abandon the principle of state sovereignty, overthrow the modern state system, and replace it with an extremely radical interpretation of an Islamic world order. These characteristics reflect a radical break from traditional objectives promoted by terrorist groups. In Combating Jihadism Barak Mendelsohn argues that the distinctiveness of the al-Qaeda threat led the international community to change its approach to counterterrorism. Contrary to common yet erroneous conceptions, the United States, in its role as a hegemon, was critical for the formulation of a multilateral response.

While most analyses of hegemony have focused on power, Mendelsohn firmly grounds the phenomenon in a web of shared norms and rules relating to the hegemon’s freedom of action. Consequently, he explains why US leadership in counterterrorism efforts was in some spheres successful, when in others it failed or did not even seek to establish multilateral collaborative frameworks. Tracing the ways in which international cooperation has stopped terrorist efforts, Combating Jihadism provides a nuanced, innovative, and timely reinterpretation of the war on terrorism and the role of the United States in leading the fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

IN & OZ

Steve Tomasula — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Steve Tomasula is a novelist like no other; his experiments in narrative and design have won him a loyal following. Exemplifying Tomasula’s style, IN & OZ is a heady, avant-garde book, rooted in convincing characters even as it simultaneously subverts the genre of novel and moves it forward.

IN & OZ is a novel of art, love, and auto mechanics. The story follows five different characters—an auto designer, photographer, musical composer, poet/sculptor, and mechanic—who live in two very different places: IN, a back-alley here and now; and OZ, which reflects the desire for somewhere better. The men and women who populate Tomasula’s landscape desperately hope to fill a void in their lives through a variety of media: music, language, dirt, light, and automobiles. As the plot moves forward, the story of the residents of INand that of their counterparts in OZconverge. A fanciful allegory that tackles class relations, art, commerce, and language, IN & OZ is a tale of the human condition that is as visually compelling as it is moving.

A novel not only for fiction lovers, but also for artists of all stripes, IN & OZ creates a fantasy that illumines our own world as it lucidly builds its own.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle; Robert C. Bartlett; Susan D. Collins — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle’s most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics—that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence—found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called “the Philosopher.” Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle’s thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.

Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle’s Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole.

The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations—of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.

Conceived in Doubt

Amanda Porterfield — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Americans have long acknowledged a deep connection between evangelical religion and democracy in the early days of the republic. This is a widely accepted narrative that is maintained as a matter of fact and tradition—and in spite of evangelicalism’s more authoritarian and reactionary aspects.

In Conceived in Doubt, Amanda Porterfield challenges this standard interpretation of evangelicalism’s relation to democracy and describes the intertwined relationship between religion and partisan politics that emerged in the formative era of the early republic. In the 1790s, religious doubt became common in the young republic as the culture shifted from mere skepticism toward darker expressions of suspicion and fear. But by the end of that decade, Porterfield shows, economic instability, disruption of traditional forms of community, rampant ambition, and greed for land worked to undermine heady optimism about American political and religious independence. Evangelicals managed and manipulated doubt, reaching out to disenfranchised citizens as well as to those seeking political influence, blaming religious skeptics for immorality and social distress, and demanding affirmation of biblical authority as the foundation of the new American national identity.

As the fledgling nation took shape, evangelicals organized aggressively, exploiting the fissures of partisan politics by offering a coherent hierarchy in which God was king and governance righteous. By laying out this narrative, Porterfield demolishes the idea that evangelical growth in the early republic was the cheerful product of enthusiasm for democracy, and she creates for us a very different narrative of influence and ideals in the young republic.

Living Legislation

Jeffery A. Jenkins; Eric M. Patashnik — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Politics is at its most dramatic during debates over important pieces of legislation. It is thus no stretch to refer to legislation as a living, breathing force in American politics. And while debates over legislative measures begin before an item is enacted, they also endure long afterward, when the political legacy of a law becomes clear.

Living Legislation provides fresh insights into contemporary American politics and public policy. Of particular interest to the contributors to this volume is the question of why some laws stand the test of time while others are eliminated, replaced, or significantly amended. Among the topics the essays discuss are how laws emerge from—and effect change within—coalition structures, the effectiveness of laws at mediating partisan conflicts, and the ways in which laws interact with broader shifts in the political environment. As an essential addition to the study of politics, Living Legislation enhances understanding of democracy, governance, and power.

Living Legislation

Jeffery A. Jenkins; Eric M. Patashnik — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Speculating Daguerre

Stephen C. Pinson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) was a true nineteenth-century visionary—a painter, printmaker, set designer, entrepreneur, inventor, and pioneer of photography. Though he was widely celebrated beyond his own lifetime for his invention of the daguerreotype, it was his origins as a theatrical designer and purveyor of visual entertainment that paved the way for Daguerre’s emergence as one of the world’s most iconic imagemakers.

In Speculating Daguerre, Stephen C. Pinson reinterprets the story of the man and his time, painting a vivid picture of Daguerre as an innovative artist and savvy impresario whose eventual fame as a photographer eclipsed everything that had come before. Drawing upon previously unpublished correspondence and unplumbed archival sources, Pinson mixes biography with an incisive study of Daguerre’s wide-ranging involvement in visual culture. From his work as a commercial lithographer to his coinvention of the Paris Diorama—a theater in the round in which Daguerre employed natural light and special effects to simulate time and movement in large-scale paintings—here we are given access to Daguerre the artist, whose tireless experimentation, entrepreneurial spirit, and exceptional talent for popular spectacle helped to usher in a new visual age.

Filled with more than one hundred illustrations and including the first complete catalogue of Daguerre’s paintings, works on paper, and daguerreotypes to appear in print, the publication of Speculating Daguerre will be a much-heralded event for anyone with even a passing interest in one of the most fascinating characters in the history of photography.

Appian Way

Robert A. Kaster — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Roman poet Statius called the via Appia “the Queen of Roads,” and for nearly a thousand years that description held true, as countless travelers trod its path from the center of Rome to the heel of Italy. Today, the road is all but gone, destroyed by time, neglect, and the incursions of modernity; to travel the Appian Way today is to be a seeker, and to walk in the footsteps of ghosts.

Our guide to those ghosts—and the layers of history they represent—is Robert A. Kaster. In The Appian Way, he brings a lifetime of studying Roman literature and history to his adventures along the ancient highway. A footsore Roman soldier pushing the imperial power south; craftsmen and farmers bringing their goods to the towns that lined the road; pious pilgrims headed to Jerusalem, using stage-by-stage directions we can still follow—all come to life once more as Kaster walks (and drives—and suffers car trouble) on what’s left of the Appian Way. Other voices help him tell the story: Cicero, Goethe, Hawthorne, Dickens, James, and even Monty Python offer commentary, insight, and curmudgeonly grumbles, their voices blending like the ages of the road to create a telescopic, perhaps kaleidoscopic, view of present and past.

To stand on the remnants of the Via Appia today is to stand in the pathway of history. With The Appian Way, Kaster invites us to close our eyes and walk with him back in time, to the campaigns of Garibaldi, the revolt of Spartacus, and the glory days of Imperial Rome. No traveler will want to miss this fascinating journey.

Restless Anthropologist

Alma Gottlieb — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

What does a move from a village in the West African rain forest to a West African community in a European city entail? What about a shift from a Greek sheep-herding community to working with evictees and housing activists in Rome and Bangkok? In The Restless Anthropologist, Alma Gottlieb brings together eight eminent scholars to recount the riveting personal and intellectual dynamics of uprooting one’s life—and decades of work—to embrace a new fieldsite.

Addressing questions of life-course, research methods, institutional support, professional networks, ethnographic models, and disciplinary paradigm shifts, the contributing writers of The Restless Anthropologist discuss the ways their earlier and later projects compare on both scholarly and personal levels, describing the circumstances of their choices and the motivations that have emboldened them to proceed, to become novices all over again. In doing so, they question some of the central expectations of their discipline, reimagining the space of the anthropological fieldsite at the heart of their scholarly lives.

Restless Anthropologist

Alma Gottlieb — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Black Patriots and Loyalists

Alan Gilbert — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

We commonly think of the American Revolution as simply the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population—African Americans would still be bound in slavery for nearly another century. In Black Patriots and Loyalists, Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink what we know about the Revolutionary War, to realize that while white Americans were fighting for their freedom, black Americans were joining the British imperial forces to gain theirs. There were actually two wars being waged at once: a political revolution for independence from Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality.

Drawing upon recently discovered archival material, Gilbert traces the intense imperial and patriot rivalry over recruitment and emancipation that led both sides to depend on blacks. As well, he presents persuasive evidence that slavery could have been abolished during the Revolution itself if either side had fully pursued the military advantage of freeing slaves and pressing them into combat—as when Washington formed the all-black and Native American First Rhode Island Regimen and Lord Dunmore freed slaves and indentured servants to fight for the British. Gilbert’s extensive research reveals that free blacks on both sides played a crucial and underappreciated role in the actual fighting. Black Patriots and Loyalists contends that the struggle for emancipation was not only basic to the Revolution itself, but was a rousing force that would inspire freedom movements like the abolition societies of the North and the black loyalist pilgrimages for freedom in places such as Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.

In this thought-provoking history, Gilbert illuminates how the fight for abolition and equality—not just for the independence of the few but for the freedom and self-government of the many—has been central to the American story from its inception.

Rules of Golf in Plain English, Third Edition

Jeffrey S. Kuhn; Bryan A. Garner — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

"The cry for the simplification of the Rules of Golf is a stock-in-trade of the journalist during the winter months. Countless words on the subject have been poured out to an ever-tolerant public, but still the long-sought simplification does not come."—Henry Longhurst, 1937

The hopes of renowned writer and golfer Henry Longhurst—and millions of golfers before and after him—have finally been realized. In The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner, American English language and usage expert, and Jeffrey S. Kuhn, volunteer USGA rules official, have translated the knotty Rules with the encouragement and permission of the United States Golf Association. The result is a modern, readable version that offers, for the first time, clear guidance to both amateurs and professionals.

Based on a 338-word set of thirteen rules written in 1744, the official Rules have grown, over two and a half centuries, to 40,000 words. Numerous contributors and a complex revision process have rendered these Rules so opaque and stylistically inconsistent that a companion volume—the 600-page Decisions on the Rules of Golf—has been published to help golfers navigate them.

Both lawyers and avid golfers, Kuhn and Garner recognized the difficulties that the language of the Rules of Golf created, especially in a sport that expects players to call penalties on themselves. By reworking the Rules line by line, word by word, they have produced an accessible resource that no golfer—from the duffer to the pro—should be without.

Politics without Vision

Tracy B. Strong — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively “thinking without a banister.”

Politics without Vision takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all to a greater or lesser extent shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse.

Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, Politics without Vision is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.

Naked Singularity

Sergio De La Pava — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender--one who, tellingly has never lost a trial. Never. In the book, we watch what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack--and how his world then slowly devolves. It’s a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it's told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center. Its panoramic reach takes readers through crime and courts, immigrant families and urban blight, media savagery and media satire, scatology and boxing, and even a breathless heist worthy of any crime novel. If Infinite Jest stuck a pin in the map of mid-90s culture and drew our trajectory from there, A Naked Singularity does the same for the feeling of surfeit, brokenness, and exhaustion that permeates our civic and cultural life today. In the opening sentence of William Gaddis’s A Frolic of His Own, a character sneers, "Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you get the law." A Naked Singularity reveals the extent of that gap, and lands firmly on the side of those who are forever getting the law.

Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars

Bruce Lincoln — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude.

The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian.

Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

Stratigraphic Paleobiology

Mark E. Patzkowsky; Steven M. Holland — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Whether the fossil record should be read at face value or whether it presents a distorted view of the history of life is an argument seemingly as old as many fossils themselves. In the late 1700s, Georges Cuvier argued for a literal interpretation, but in the early 1800s, Charles Lyell’s gradualist view of the earth’s history required a more nuanced interpretation of that same record. To this day, the tension between literal and interpretive readings lies at the heart of paleontological research, influencing the way scientists view extinction patterns and their causes, ecosystem persistence and turnover, and the pattern of morphologic change and mode of speciation.

With Stratigraphic Paleobiology, Mark E. Patzkowsky and Steven M. Holland present a critical framework for assessing the fossil record, one based on a modern understanding of the principles of sediment accumulation. Patzkowsky and Holland argue that the distribution of fossil taxa in time and space is controlled not only by processes of ecology, evolution, and environmental change, but also by the stratigraphic processes that govern where and when sediment that might contain fossils is deposited and preserved. The authors explore the exciting possibilities of stratigraphic paleobiology, and along the way demonstrate its great potential to answer some of the most critical questions about the history of life: How and why do environmental niches change over time? What is the tempo and mode of evolutionary change and what processes drive this change? How has the diversity of life changed through time, and what processes control this change? And, finally, what is the tempo and mode of change in ecosystems over time?

Stratigraphic Paleobiology

Mark E. Patzkowsky; Steven M. Holland — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

African American Writers and Classical Tradition

William W. Cook; James Tatum — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.

Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of “classic” writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.

Rereading the Fossil Record

David Sepkoski — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Although fossils have provided some of the most important evidence for evolution, the discipline of paleontology has not always had a central place in evolutionary biology. Beginning in Darwin’s day, and for much of the twentieth century, paleontologists were often regarded as mere fossil collectors by many evolutionary biologists, their attempts to contribute to evolutionary theory ignored or regarded with scorn. In the 1950s, however, paleontologists began mounting a counter-movement that insisted on the valid, important, and original contribution of paleontology to evolutionary theory. This movement, called “paleobiology” by its proponents, advocated for an approach to the fossil record that was theoretical, quantitative, and oriented towards explaining the broad patterns of evolution and extinction in the history of life.

Rereading the Fossil Record provides, as never before, a historical account of the origin, rise, and importance of paleobiology, from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1980s. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, David Sepkoski shows how the movement was conceived and promoted by a small but influential group of paleontologists—including Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, among others—and examines the intellectual, disciplinary, and political dynamics involved in the ascendency of paleobiology. By emphasizing the close relationship between paleobiology and other evolutionary disciplines, this book writes a new chapter in the history of evolutionary biology, while also offering insights into the dynamics of disciplinary change in modern science.

Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars

Bruce Lincoln — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

Damsel

Richard Stark; Sarah Weinman — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating and more hot-blooded than Parker; think fewer guns, more dames.

Not that there isn’t violence and adventure aplenty. The Damsel begins directly after the Parker novel The Handle. Following a wounded Grofield and his damsel on a scenic, action-packed road trip from Mexico City to Acapulco, The Damsel is full of wit, adrenaline, and political intrigue.

With a new foreword by Sarah Weinman that situates the Grofield series within Westlake’s work as a whole, these novels are an exciting addition to any crime fiction fan’s library.

Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting

David Knipp — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The brilliantly painted ivory boxes from twelfth-century Norman Sicily have long been regarded as some of the most extraordinary artifacts recovered there. Evidence of the rich and multilayered culture, these small but distinctly exotic boxes also demonstrate the Normans’ fascination with Islamic culture and art. Yet despite their undeniable historical importance, the last comprehensive examination of the Sicilian ivories was published in 1939.

Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting: 1100–1300 is the first book-length treatment devoted exclusively to the ornate ivory boxes in more than seventy years. Among the many contributors to this volume are Marianne Barrucand, Anthony Cutler, Thomas Dittelbach, Maria Vittoria Fontana, Eva Hoffman, Mat Immerzeel, David Knipp, Martina Müller-Wiener, and Mourad Rammah.

Edward Thomas

Judy Kendall — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Edward Thomas: The Origins of his Poetry is a critical study of the early twentieth century English poet Edward Thomas (1878–1917), who is known for the poems he wrote during World War I. Judy Kendall offers close readings of Thomas’s poems, prose, and letters, all the while illuminating his close relationship to nature; connections between his approach to composition and the writing of Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, and William James; and the influence of Japanese aesthetics on his works. Kendall’s study also presents surprising and insightful ideas about poetic composition in general.

Interpretation of Law in China

Michal Tomásek; Guido Mühlemann — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In March 2009, the Faculty of Law at Charles University in Prague, together with the University of Zürich, organized a seminar on Chinese legal culture. As a follow up to this event the participants and other scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America contributed essays looking at Chinese law through a variety of lenses, from its historical roots to its modern reforms. Special attention is also paid here to the question of Westernization, the role of globalization in Chinese legal system, and the act of “translating” between western and Asian legal (and cultural) systems. A wide-ranging collection that contains various perspectives from leading experts in the field, Interpretation of Law in China is a remarkable feat of scholarship and essential reading for anyone interested in comparative, international, or Asian law.

Dolphin Confidential

Maddalena Bearzi — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Who hasn’t fantasized about the unique thrill of working among charismatic and clever dolphins in the wild? We need not live this solely in our imaginations anymore. With Dolphin Confidential Maddalena Bearzi invites all of us shore-bound dreamers to join her and travel alongside the dolphins. In this fascinating account, she takes us inside the world of a marine scientist and offers a firsthand understanding of marine mammal behavior, as well as the frustrations, delights, and creativity that make up dolphin research.

In this intimate narrative, Bearzi recounts her experiences at sea, tracing her own evolution as a woman and a scientist from her earliest travails to her transformation into an advocate for conservation and dolphin protection. These compelling, in-depth descriptions of her fieldwork also present a captivating look into dolphin social behavior and intelligence. The central part of the book is devoted to the metropolitan bottlenose dolphins of California, as Bearzi draws on her extensive experience to offer insights into the daily lives of these creatures—as well as the difficulties involved in collecting the data that transforms hunches into hypotheses and eventually scientific facts. The book closes by addressing the critical environmental and conservation problems facing these magnificent, socially complex, highly intelligent, and emotional beings.

An honest, down-to-earth analysis of what it means to be a marine biologist in the field today, Dolphin Confidential offers an entertaining, never less than candid, and always informative description of life among the dolphins.

Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams

Andrew S. Berish — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s, Andrew Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound.

Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries—from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban—and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams

Andrew S. Berish — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Cruel Radiance

Susie Linfield — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images—and learning to see the people in them—is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns—and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts—Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book’s concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare.

A bracing and unsettling book, The Cruel Radiance convincingly demonstrates that if we hope to alleviate political violence, we must first truly understand it—and to do that, we must begin to look.

Belgrade. Formal/Informal

ETH Studio Basel, Contemporary City Institute — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

ETH Studio Basel, an institute of urban research, undertakes projects that explore the evolution of the contemporary city, looking specifically at how cities transform over time and interact with material space. Belgrade. Formal / Informal presents the fascinating findings of ETH Studio Basel’s research in the former Yugoslavian and now Serbian capital, investigating in particular the city’s development following the international embargo against the Milosevic regime after the Yugoslavian wars of separation in the 1990s until the present day.

This richly illustrated book explores in depth how Belgrade has changed throughout years of upheaval and economic shortage. It shows the result of the interplay between guided and accidental urban planning and construction and the varied architecture that has emerged from this. In essays by architects and urban planners, Belgrade is presented as an example of how contemporary cities develop in an increasingly global community. Of interest to architects and planners, Belgrade. Formal / Informal provides a model of how cities spatially adapt to the constantly expanding needs of their inhabitants.

Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil

Ross Coen — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In 1969, an icebreaking tanker, the SS Manhattan, was commissioned by Humble Oil to transit the Northwest Passage in order to test the logistical and economic feasibility of an all-marine transportation system for Alaska North Slope crude oil. Proposed as an alternative to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Manhattan made two voyages to the North American Arctic and collected volumes of scientific data on ice conditions and the behavior of ships in ice. Although the Manhattan successfully navigated the Northwest Passage—closing a five-hundred-year chapter of Arctic exploration by becoming the first commercial vessel to do so—the expedition ultimately demonstrated the impracticality of moving crude oil using icebreaking ships.

Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil details this historic voyage, establishing its significant impact on the future of marine traffic and resource development in the Arctic and setting the stage for the current oil crisis.

Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages

R. A. Griffiths; P. R. Schofield — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages presents the latest research of more than a dozen distinguished British historians on Wales during the Middle Ages. The essays cover a vast range of topics, among them the politics and political culture of Wales in the early kingdoms; the law and economy in Wales as related to that of Spain and Brittany; the opportunities for social advancement in town and country; and the patronage of church building, with illustrative narratives of St David’s Cathedral, Grosmont, and Newton Nottage. The book also details the emergence of approaches to the study of medieval Wales in the early twentieth century that added new strands to our understanding of Welsh history.

Holistic Shakespeare

Debra Charlton — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Shakespeare’s plays are staples of the classroom. Yet too often they are taught as antiquated works of literature with little reference to their theatrical life and enduringhuman themes. Applying the methodologies of the holistic education model to the study of four Shakespearean plays— Othello, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Measure for Measure—Holistic Shakespeare offers lively theater-based activities to complement traditional analytical exercises. In keeping with the aims of holistic education, each play is studied in relation to a particular social or ethical topic addressed in the work.

Despite abundant scholarly works in the field of Shakespeare studies, few texts combine analytical and creative learning methodologies—and none before has specifically applied the principles of holistic education to the topic. Accessible to both teachers and learners, this book will be an essential tool for making Shakespeare come to life in the classroom.

Gothic Contemporaries

Joanne Watkiss — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Gothic Contemporaries is the first study to align twenty-first-century fiction with a revised understanding of the Gothic. Through close readings of several twenty-first-century novels—including The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor, The Sea by John Banville, The Gathering by Anne Enright, and others—and drawing ideas from Jacques Derrida’s later works, Joanne Watkiss demonstrates how contemporary fiction reworks the traditional ghost stories of the past. Among the numerous themes Watkins explores are the links between memory and haunting; the architectural function of language; writing and the uncanny; the law and its associations with mortgage, death, and hospitality; the poison of inherited lineage; and the positions of thresholds and traces of violence within space. With its profound interplay of text and theory, Gothic Contemporaries will appeal not just to students and scholars of Gothic studies, but also to those interested in architecture, film, and contemporary fiction.

Gothic Contemporaries

Joanne Watkiss — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Films of Elías Querejeta

Tom Whittaker — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Films of Elías Querejeta is the first book in English to explore the films of Spain’s most celebrated producer, Elías Querejeta. Tom Whittaker highlights Querejeta’s recurring emphasis on landscape, arguing that it can be understood as a site of political struggle against Francoism and Spain’s embrace of neoliberal capitalism. In bringing together both the importance of cinematic and spatial production, Whittaker’s study makes an original contribution not only to film studies but also to Spanish cultural studies and cultural geography.

Italian Crime Fiction

Giuliana Pieri — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This volume is the first study in the English language to focus specifically on Italian crime fiction. The chapters, by leading British and North American scholars, trace the history and development of Italian detective and noir fiction from the 1930s to the present, and examine such topics as the representation of space, gender, and the tradition of impegno—the social and political engagement that characterized the Italian cultural and literary scene in the postwar period.

Italian Crime Fiction

Giuliana Pieri — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Global Child Poverty and Well-Being

Alberto Minujin; Shailen Nandy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Of the countless people around the world enduring deprivation and tremendous suffering from poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions are children. But research on poverty and development has only relatively recently begun to focus on this aspect of global poverty. Featuring contributions from leading researchers, this book examines how child poverty and well-being are conceptualized, defined, and measured and presents regional and national studies of child poverty from around the world. Global Child Poverty and Well-Being is an urgent call to arms for researchers and policymakers to confront one of the world’s great ongoing tragedies.

Global Child Poverty and Well-Being

Alberto Minujin; Shailen Nandy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Understanding Health and Social Care

Jon Glasby — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

New austerity measures have substantially changed the landscape for social and health care in the United Kingdom. Fully updated to reflect key developments under the New Labour and Coalition governments, this second edition of Understanding Health and Social Care provides an up-to-date guide to the increasingly important partnership between health and social care workers. Jon Glasby combines practical information about welfare systems with key theoretical material to present a complete picture of these overlapping fields.

Understanding Health and Social Care

Jon Glasby — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Understanding Family Meanings

Jane Ribbens McCarthy; Megan Doolittle; Shelley Day Sclater — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A familiar, yet contentious topic, the subject of family can present difficulties in the classroom, on levels ranging from personal to political and social. Understanding Family Meanings attacks this dilemma head-on, focusing on family meanings in diverse contexts to enhance our understanding of everyday social lives. Ranging over such issues as power, inequality, and values, this instructive text serves as an ideal introduction to family studies as it explores the shifting and subtle ways individuals, researchers, policymakers, and professionals make sense of the idea of family.

Understanding Family Meanings

Jane Ribbens McCarthy; Megan Doolittle; Shelley Day Sclater — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Changing Adolescence

Ann Hagell — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Are today’s young people more stressed, anxious, distressed, or antisocial than they used to be? What does research tell us about the adolescent experience today and how it has changed over time? And how do trends in adolescent well-being since the 1970s relate to other changes in education, leisure, communities, and family life? Delving into topics such as stress, parenting, school experience, drug and alcohol use, neighborhoods, peers, and consumerism, Changing Adolescence explores how society-wide changes may affect young people’s behavior, mental health, and transitions toward adulthood.

Changing Adolescence

Ann Hagell — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

History of Myanmar since Ancient Times

Michael Aung-Thwin; Maitrii Aung-Thwin — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is often characterized as a place of repressive military rule, civil war, censorship, and corrupt elections—and despite recent attempts to promote tourism to see the country’s natural beauty, it is not yet a travel hotspot. Most of the Western world remains unaware of the storied history and rich culture found in this Southeast Asian country.

In A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times, Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung-Thwin take us from the sacred stupas (structures containing Buddhist relics) of the plains of Bagan to the grand, colonial-era British mansions, finding the splendor that remains in this forgotten country. They delve into Myanmar’s nearly three-thousand-year history, discovering the first traces of civilization that appeared during the Stone Age, witnessing the protests of Buddhist monks during the early twentieth century, and describing the colonial era of British rule and the republic that followed. This book also considers the state of Myanmar today, examining the 2010 elections—the first in over twenty years—and exploring the lives, culture, and ambitions of the Burmese people. The most comprehensive history of Myanmar ever published in the English language, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Southeast Asia.

Complete House and Grounds

Caren Yglesias — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Andrew Jackson Downing, now considered the father of American landscape architecture, was among the first to develop aesthetic theories that differed sharply from those perpetuated in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. He designed houses based upon American democratic values and advocated for domestic design that would satisfy basic human needs along with the desire to live well.

In this book, Caren Yglesias, a practicing architect, examines Downing’s legacy with an eye for relevance to today’s domestic landscape. She builds on Downing’s work in order to redefine what makes a “complete,” or nurturing and fulfilling, house and grounds.

Integrated Coastal Management

Martin D.A. Le Tissier; Maarten Bavinck; Leontine E. Visser; Dik Roth — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Integrated coastal management is unquestionably important, but it’s extremely difficult in practice because it requires skills derived from various disciplines. In order to succeed, coastal managers must overcome disciplinary boundaries and construct a holistic vision that is both practical and unique to their profession. This manual provides university teachers with a three-module course to train professional coastal managers. As many students and teachers in this field are from the natural sciences, the focus is on embedding social science concepts and approaches into education for coastal management.

Dorothy Edwards

Claire Flay — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Dorothy Edwards is the first full-length critical literary study of Dorothy Edwards, the enigmatic author born in the small mining valley of Ogmore Vale in 1903. Combining close textual analysis with comprehensive biography, and drawing from newly available diaries and correspondence, Claire Flay considers Edwards’s work in the light of her views and experiences. Flay demonstrates how Edwards’s upbringing deeply influenced her perception of gender, class, and nationality, themes Edwards explores with great care in her novel, Winter Sonata, and short story collection, Rhapsody.

King Copper

Ronald Rees — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

For the whole of the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth, a belt of coastal smelters—using local coals and ores from Cornwall, Cuba, and Chile—produced virtually all of Britain’s copper, and much of the world’s. Copper brought considerable wealth to Swansea, the center of the industry, and to several neighboring towns. But there was a price for the prosperity. The billowing clouds of toxic, foul-smelling smoke that copper production also produced ruined crops and killed livestock, setting farmers against townsmen and the Welsh-speaking Cymry Cymraeg against their Anglo-Welsh cousins. King Copper is the first history to document the social and environmental impact of the copper industry in south Wales during this period.

Artists' Postcards

Jeremy Cooper — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Over the last twenty years an increasing number of artists have turned to expressing themselves through postcards. Whether by way of installation, collage, addition to, or alteration of existing postcards, or the production of postcards themselves, many prominent artists employ the medium in some form. Artists’ Postcards traces the origin of artists’ fascination with postcards from the early 1900s but with a focus on the contemporary, revealing the significant number of artists who have made creative and unusual artworks in postcard form.

With 400 images of postcards created by many well-known artists, Artists’ Postcards is the first critical guide to the subject. From surrealists to Fluxus and conceptual artists, this book includes an array of historical and contemporary postcards by such artists as George Grosz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Joseph Beuys, Ben Vautier, Dieter Roth, Ray Johnson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gavin Turk, Tacita Dean, Gilbert and George and Rachel Whiteread.

Artists’ Postcards will be of interest to artists and graphic designers, as well as to postcard collectors.

Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime

Ellen Prager — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

When viewed from a quiet beach, the ocean, with its rolling waves and vast expanse, can seem calm, even serene. But hidden beneath the sea’s waves are a staggering abundance and variety of active creatures, engaged in the never-ending struggles of life—to reproduce, to eat, and to avoid being eaten.

With Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime, marine scientist Ellen Prager takes us deep into the sea to introduce an astonishing cast of fascinating and bizarre creatures that make the salty depths their home. From the tiny but voracious arrow worms whose rapacious ways may lead to death by overeating, to the lobsters that battle rivals or seduce mates with their urine, to the sea’s masters of disguise, the octopuses, Prager not only brings to life the ocean’s strange creatures, but also reveals the ways they interact as predators, prey, or potential mates. And while these animals make for some jaw-dropping stories—witness the sea cucumber, which ejects its own intestines to confuse predators, or the hagfish that ties itself into a knot to keep from suffocating in its own slime—there’s far more to Prager’s account than her ever-entertaining anecdotes: again and again, she illustrates the crucial connections between life in the ocean and humankind, in everything from our food supply to our economy, and in drug discovery, biomedical research, and popular culture.

Written with a diver’s love of the ocean, a novelist’s skill at storytelling, and a scientist’s deep knowledge, Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime enchants as it educates, enthralling us with the wealth of life in the sea—and reminding us of the need to protect it.

Ramparts of Empire

Timothy Crick — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In 1860, Palmerston’s parliament sanctioned the construction of the largest system of fortifications that the British Isles had ever seen, or would ever see again, in order to defend against a feared French invasion. William Jervois (1821–97), then a young major in the Royal Engineers, was appointed as “design leader” of this program, which later led to a career in fortress construction that spanned continents and empires. This volume is a detailed study of Jervois’s life and works, based on extensive use of extracts from his diary and illustrations of his most important fortresses, offering the reader a rounded picture of his glittering career, as well as the political and technical considerations involved in fort and armament construction.

Notting Hill Mystery

Charles Warren Adams — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Can you name the first detective novel ever published? For years, many believed it to be Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, published in 1868. Others speculated it might be Émile Gaboriau’s first Monsieur Lecoq novel, L’Affaire Lerouge. Actually, the firstmodern detective novel predates both of these by several years—Charles Warren Adams’s The Notting Hill Mystery, originally published as an eight-part serial in Once A Week magazine in 1862 under the pseudonym Charles Felix, then as a single-volume novel in 1863 by Bradbury & Evans, is considered to truly be the first.

The Notting Hill Mystery begins in London, where the wife of the sinister Baron R__ dies after drinking from a bottle of acid, apparently while sleepwalking in her husband’s home laboratory. It looks like an accident, until insurance investigator Ralph Henderson learns that Baron R__ took out numerous life insurance policies on his wife. As Henderson investigates the case, he discovers not one, but three murders. Presented as Henderson’s evidential findings—diary entries, family letters, chemical analysis reports, interviews with witnesses, along with a crime scene map—the novel displays innovative techniques that would not become common features of detective fiction until the 1920s.

To the delight of all fans of detective fiction, the British Library makes this landmark text available once again. This handsome new edition also includes George du Maurier’s illustrations, the first edition to do so since the original publication in serial form.

Magnificent Maps

Tom Harper; Peter Barber — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Maps are often as much a visual art form as they are a practical tool for navigation. Of particular visual interest are display maps—maps that often used size and beauty to convey messages of regional and social status and power. Despite their historical significance, many of these display maps have been lost and destroyed over time. Magnificent Maps brings together the best surviving examples in order to illustrate their role in early modern Europe and describe the settings in which they were displayed.

Most of the maps collected in Magnificent Maps date from the period 1450 to 1800, the heyday of this approach to mapping. During their time, these maps were displayed in a range of settings, from palaces to schoolrooms to bedchambers, and Peter Barber and Tom Harper here offer vivid descriptions of their original settings and examine their dual roles as propaganda and art.

Drawn from one of the greatest collections in the world at the British Library, many of these maps will be completely new even to experts. The unusual aspect of cartography presented in Magnificent Maps will appeal to collectors, historians, mapmakers and users, as well as anyone curious about the many ways we have come to illustrate and define our world.

Political Economy of Pipelines

Jeff D. Makholm — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

With global demand for energy poised to increase by more than half in the next three decades, the supply of safe, reliable, and reasonably priced gas and oil will continue to be of fundamental importance to modern economies. Central to this supply are the pipelines that transport this energy. And while the fundamental economics of the major pipeline networks are the same, the differences in their ownership, commercial development, and operation can provide insight into the workings of market institutions in various nations.

Drawing on a century of the world’s experience with gas and oil pipelines, this book illustrates the importance of economics in explaining the evolution of pipeline politics in various countries. It demonstrates that institutional differences influence ownership and regulation, while rents and consumer pricing depend on the size and diversity of existing markets, the depth of regulatory institutions, and the historical structure of the pipeline businesses themselves. The history of pipelines is also rife with social conflict, and Makholm explains how and when institutions in a variety of countries have controlled pipeline behavior—either through economic regulation or government ownership—in the public interest.

Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation

The British Library — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

How did the actors of Shakespeare’s stage sound to the audiences of his day? For the first time, this disc offers listeners the chance to hear England’s greatest playwright performed by a company of actors using the pronunciations of the Elizabethan era. Under the guidance of Ben Crystal—actor, author of Shakespeare on Toast, and an expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation—the company performs scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and several of his best-known poems. Listeners will hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed, and poetic effects enhanced. The CD is accompanied by an introductory essay by Shakespeare authority David Crystal.

Colorful Realm

Yukio Lippit; Ota Aya; Oka Yasuhiro; Hayakawa Yasuhiro; Shirono Seiji — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A much-anticipated harbinger of spring, the cherry blossom is also exemplary of the Japanese artistic aesthetic—a delight in simple, natural beauty and an attentiveness to the changing seasons. This spring will mark the centennial of Japan’s gift of three thousand cherry trees to Washington, DC, and this sumptuously illustrated catalogue is the companion to a celebratory exhibition at the National Gallery of Art featuring the work of Ito Jakuchu.

Jakuchu (1716–1800), a wealthy wholesaler and talented painter, is, in Japan, the most recognized artist of the premodern era. His thirty-scroll set of bird-and-flower paintings titled Colorful Realm of Living Beings is a renowned cultural treasure, one of the most beautiful and skilled examples of how the natural world is depicted and symbolized in Japanese art. Presenting gorgeous flora and fauna in meticulous detail, the scrolls are reunited here with Jakuchu’s triptych of the Buddha Sakyamuni from the Zen monastery Shokokuji in Kyoto. This stunning volume reproduces these masterpieces of Edo-period art and complements them with extensive background material on their significance. Recent conservation of the scrolls has revealed new information about the materials and techniques used by Jakuchu, and those findings are discussed in the volume, offering a multifaceted understanding of the artist’s virtuosity and innovation as a painter.

As the first English-language examination and overseas display of Jakuchu’s Colorful Realm in its entirety, the book and exhibition will offer new audiences a chance to encounter this landmark work— generously lent by the Imperial Household Agency, Tokyo.

Handbook of Pentecostal Christianity

Adam Stewart — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Handbook of Pentecostal Christianity is an easy-to-read guide designed for those interested in learning about one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the world. Adam Stewart’s unique collection presents concise, yet comprehensive explanations of some of the most important terms and concepts needed to understand the origins and development, as well as the beliefs and practices, of Pentecostalism worldwide.

Twenty-four scholars from five continents provide entries, which are written from disciplinary perspectives as diverse as anthropology, biblical studies, black church studies, history, religious studies, sociology, and theology. The fifty entries shed light on such aspects as The Azusa Street Mission and Revival, Baptism of the Holy Spirit, exorcism, Godly Love, prophecy, snake handling, and the Word of Faith movement. Each entry also includes a brief list of references and suggestions for further reading.

These brief, engaging explanations on aspects of Pentecostalism can be read on their own, or alphabetically from start to finish. In its entirety, Stewart’s text provides the reader with an introduction to the history, theology, practices, and contemporary forms of Pentecostalism as it stands at the outset of the twenty-first century. Stewart’s handbook is an appealing introduction to Pentecostalism suitable for both students of religion and the curious general reader.

Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato's Laws

Mark J. Lutz — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

All over the world secular rationalist governments and judicial authorities have been challenged by increasingly forceful claims made on behalf of divine law. For those who believe that reason—not faith—should be the basis of politics and the law, proponents of divine law raise theoretical and practical concerns that must be addressed seriously and respectfully. As Mark J. Lutz makes plain in this illuminating book, they have an important ally in Plato, whose long neglected Laws provides an eye-opening analysis of the relation between political philosophy and religion and a powerful defense of political rationalism.

Plato mounts his case, Lutz reveals, through a productive dialogue between his Athenian Stranger and various devout citizens that begins by exploring the common ground between them, but ultimately establishes the authority of rational political philosophy to guide the law. The result will fascinate not only political theorists but also scholars at all levels with an interest in the intersection of religion and politics or in the questions that surround ethics and civic education.

With the Hand

Mels van Driel; Paul Vincent — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

People call it everything from “walking your dog” to “scratching your bean.” Women usually do it at home. Men, it sometimes seems, do it everywhere. Some people think it’s healthy; others think it is a sin that will send you straight to hell. But while many people declare that everyone’s doing it, no one actually talks about it—outside the pages of Cosmo, masturbation is among the most taboo of topics, not suitable for polite society or public conversation.

Mels van Driel boldly breaks this silence in order to help the world overcome its diffidence toward solo sex in With the Hand. Consulting everyone from doctors and sexologists to feminists and chauvinists, van Driel explains what masturbation actually is and describes the latest discoveries and developments on the subject. He also looks to theologians, historians, and philosophers to understand perceptions of masturbation across cultures and religions throughout history. Covering a great number of topics, including age, location, and frequency, as well as the effects of circumcision and the ability to have multiple orgasms, With the Hand also explores masturbation in art, literature, poetry, and music.

Addressing the physical, mythical, and mythological, this often humorous and always informative book clears up the confusion surrounding this universal, and universally unmentionable, topic.

Queer Uncanny

Paulina Palmer — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth

Peter Kraftl; John Horton; Faith Tucker — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This comprehensive book shows how geographical concepts—such as place, scale, mobility, and boundary making—can be put to use by social scientists and practitioners focused on young people. Drawn from cases in Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the essays collected here demonstrate that local and national concerns remain central to many youth programs, while also highlighting the increasingly globalized nature of youth policy. Informed by cutting-edge theoretical approaches in human geography, sociology, anthropology, and youth work, Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth will aid anyone working in those fields.

Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth

Peter Kraftl; John Horton; Faith Tucker — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Ted Lambert

Ted Lambert; Lew Freedman — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Ted Lambert is regarded as one of the premier Alaska artists, a true pioneer. Born in 1905, and raised in the Chicago area, Lambert moved to Alaska in 1925 and went to work as a miner near McCarthy. He held several jobs, predominantly working at a copper mine and mushing dogs—first for adventure, and then as a mail carrier.

Lambert left Alaska in 1931 to study art for a year at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, then moved to Seattle, where he began a mentorship under Eustace Ziegler, with whom he traveled throughout Alaska and painted. Eventually Lambert settled down in Fairbanks, where he stayed for twenty years and solidified his reputation as a painter and an artist.

But in 1960 he disappeared from the remote cabin he was living in at Bristol Bay. No trace of his body was ever found, but among the effects rescued from his last home was a memoir of his early days in Alaska. Presented here and never before published, these memoirs reveal Lambert to be a keen and intelligent observer and relay the adventure story of a young man who would become one of Alaska’s most important artists.

Story of a Life

Anna Pavolovna Vygodskaia; Eugene Avrutin; Robert Greene — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Anna Pavlovna Vygodskaia’s autobiography, originally published in 1938, is a rare and fascinating historical account of Jewish childhood and young adult life in Tsarist Russia. At a time when the vast majority of Jews resided in small market towns in the Pale of Settlement, Vygodskaia liberated herself from that world and embraced the day-to-day rhythms, educational activities, and new intellectual opportunities in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Her story offers a unique glimpse of Jewish daily life that is rarely documented in public sources—of neighborly interactions, children’s games and household rituals, love affairs and emotional outbursts, clothing customs, and leisure time.

Most first-person narratives of this kind reconstruct an isolated and self-contained Jewish world, but The Story of a Life uniquely describes the unprecedented social opportunities, as well as the many political and personal challenges, that young Jewish women and men experienced in the Russia of the 1870s and 1880s. In addition to their artful translation, Eugene M. Avrutin and Robert H. Greene thoroughly explicate this historical context in their introduction.

South African Cinema 1896-2010

Martin Botha — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Taking an inclusive approach to South African film history, this volume represents an ambitious attempt to analyze and place in appropriate sociopolitical context the aesthetic highlights of South African cinema from 1896 to the present. Thoroughly researched and fully documented by renowned film scholar Martin Botha, the book focuses on the many highly creative uses of cinematic form, style, and genre as set against South Africa’s complex and often turbulent social and political landscape. Included are more than two hundred illustrations and a look at many aspects of South African film history that haven’t been previously documented.

On Time Delivery

William S. Schneider — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From the turn of the twentieth century in interior Alaska, dog team mail carriers were charged with maintaining the trail systems and carrying the mail until they were replaced in the late 1930s and ’40s by airplane mail service. With the advent and widespread adoption of aviation, many of the trails were abandoned, and a generation of rural Alaskans has now grown up with few ties to the overland trail system that supported their grandparents and inspired modern traditions such as the world-famous Iditarod Race.

In addition to chronicling the history of this unique postal service, On Time Delivery pays tribute to the men who carried the mail and the families who supported them, and considers the changing nature of how people experience the country where they live—and how this is affected by the systems of communication and transportation upon which they depend.

Unoriginal Genius

Marjorie Perloff — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

What is the place of individual genius in a global world of hyper-information— a world in which, as Walter Benjamin predicted more than seventy years ago, everyone is potentially an author? For poets in such a climate, "originality" begins to take a back seat to what can be done with other people’s words—framing, citing, recycling, and otherwise mediating available words and sentences, and sometimes entire texts. Marjorie Perloff here explores this intriguing development in contemporary poetry: the embrace of "unoriginal" writing. Paradoxically, she argues, such citational and often constraint-based poetry is more accessible and, in a sense, "personal" than was the hermetic poetry of the 1980s and 90s.

Perloff traces this poetics of "unoriginal genius" from its paradigmatic work, Benjamin’s encyclopedic Arcades Project, a book largely made up of citations. She discusses the processes of choice, framing, and reconfiguration in the work of Brazilian Concretism and Oulipo, both movements now understood as precursors of such hybrid citational texts as Charles Bernstein’s opera libretto Shadowtime and Susan Howe’s documentary lyric sequence The Midnight. Perloff also finds that the new syncretism extends to language: for example, to the French-Norwegian Caroline Bergvall writing in English and the Japanese Yoko Tawada, in German. Unoriginal Genius concludes with a discussion of Kenneth Goldsmith’s conceptualist book Traffic—a seemingly "pure’" radio transcript of one holiday weekend’s worth of traffic reports. In these instances and many others, Perloff shows us "poetry by other means" of great ingenuity, wit, and complexity.

Whose People?

Jasmine Donahaye — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Until now, Wales has been almost completely neglected in British Jewish studies. But with Whose People? Jasmine Donahaye fills this gap in the research, as she examines the long history of Welsh interest in Palestine and Israel. Donahaye surveys Welsh missionary writing, fictional imaginings of Jews, and the political use of Palestine and Israel, challenging conventional wisdom about Welsh tolerance and liberalism and revealing a complex and unique relationship. Donahaye’s study makes an important contribution to international Jewish studies, to the study of British colonial involvement in Palestine, and to Welsh and Jewish literary and cultural history.

Wasted World

Rob Hengeveld — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

All systems produce waste as part of a cycle—bacteria, humans, combustion engines, even one as large and complex as a city. To some extent, this waste can be absorbed, processed, or recycled—though never completely. In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld reveals how a long history of human consumption has left our world drowning in this waste.

This is a compelling and urgent work that traces the related histories of population growth and resource consumption. As Hengeveld explains, human life (and population growth) depends not only on mineral resources but also on energy. People first obtained energy from food and later supplemented this with energy from water, wind, and animals as one source after another fell short of our ever-growing needs. Finally, we turned to fossil energy, which generates atmospheric waste that is the key driver of global climate change. The effects of this climate change are already leading to food shortages and social collapse in some parts of the world. Because all of these problems are interconnected, Hengeveld argues strenuously that measures to counter individual problems cannot work. Instead, we need to tackle their common cause—our staggering population growth. While many scientists agree that population growth is one of the most critical issues pressuring the environment, Hengeveld is unique in his insistence on turning our attention to the waste such growth leaves in its wake and to the increasing demands of our global society.

A practical look at the sustainability of our planet from the perspective of a biologist whose expertise is in the abundances and distributions of species, Wasted World presents a fascinating picture of the whole process of using, wasting, and exhausting energy and material resources. And by elucidating the complexity of the causes of our current global state, Hengeveld offers us a way forward.

Fear of Food

Harvey Levenstein — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

There may be no greater source of anxiety for Americans today than the question of what to eat and drink. Are eggs the perfect protein, or are they cholesterol bombs? Is red wine good for my heart or bad for my liver? Will pesticides, additives, and processed foods kill me? Here with some very rare and very welcome advice is food historian Harvey Levenstein: Stop worrying!

In Fear of Food Levenstein reveals the people and interests who have created and exploited these worries, causing an extraordinary number of Americans to allow fear to trump pleasure in dictating their food choices. He tells of the prominent scientists who first warned about deadly germs and poisons in foods, and their successors who charged that processing foods robs them of life-giving vitamins and minerals. These include Nobel Prize–winner Eli Metchnikoff, who advised that yogurt would enable people to live to be 140 by killing the life-threatening germs in their intestines, and Elmer McCollum, the “discoverer” of vitamins, who tailored his warnings about vitamin deficiencies to suit the food producers who funded him. Levenstein also highlights how large food companies have taken advantage of these concerns by marketing their products to combat the fear of the moment. Such examples include the co-opting of the “natural foods” movement, which grew out of the belief that inhabitants of a remote Himalayan Shangri-la enjoyed remarkable health and longevity by avoiding the very kinds of processed food these corporations produced, and the physiologist Ancel Keys, originator of the Mediterranean Diet, who provided the basis for a powerful coalition of scientists, doctors, food producers, and others to convince Americans that high-fat foods were deadly.

In Fear of Food, Levenstein offers a much-needed voice of reason; he expertly questions these stories of constantly changing advice to reveal that there are no hard-and-fast facts when it comes to eating. With this book, he hopes to free us from the fears that cloud so many of our food choices and allow us to finally rediscover the joys of eating something just because it tastes good.

Completing College

Vincent Tinto — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto’s pathbreaking book Leaving College has been recognized as the definitive resource on student retention in higher education. Now, with Completing College, Tinto offers administrators a coherent framework with which to develop and implement programs to promote completion.

Deftly distilling an enormous amount of research, Tinto identifies the essential conditions enabling students to succeed and continue on within institutions. Especially during the early years, he shows that students thrive in settings that pair high expectations for success with structured academic, social, and financial support, provide frequent feedback and assessments of their performance, and promote their active involvement with other students and faculty. And while these conditions may be worked on and met at different institutional levels, Tinto points to the classroom as the center of student education and life, and therefore the primary target for institutional action.

Improving retention rates continues to be among the most widely studied fields in higher education, and Completing College carefully synthesizes the latest research and, most importantly, translates it into practical steps that administrators can take to enhance student success.

Vegetables

Evelyne Bloch-Dano; Teresa Lavender Fagan — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From Michael Pollan to locavores, Whole Foods to farmer’s markets, today cooks and foodies alike are paying more attention than ever before to the history of the food they bring into their kitchens—and especially to vegetables. Whether it’s an heirloom tomato, curled cabbage, or succulent squash, from a farmer’s market or a backyard plot, the humble vegetable offers more than just nutrition—it also represents a link with long tradition of farming and gardening, nurturing and breeding. .

In this charming new book, those veggies finally get their due. In capsule biographies of eleven different vegetables—artichokes, beans, chard, cabbage, cardoons, carrots, chili peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, peas, pumpkins, and tomatoes—Evelyne Bloch-Dano explores the world of vegetables in all its facets, from science and agriculture to history, culture, and, of course, cooking. From the importance of peppers in early international trade to the most recent findings in genetics, from the cultural cachet of cabbage to Proust’s devotion to beef-and-carrot stew, to the surprising array of vegetables that preceded the pumpkin as the avatar of All Hallow’s Eve, Bloch-Dano takes readers on a dazzling tour of the fascinating stories behind our daily repasts.

Spicing her cornucopia with an eye for anecdote and a ready wit, Bloch-Dano has created a feast that’s sure to satisfy gardeners, chefs, and eaters alike.

Cutting the Fuse

Robert A. Pape; James K. Feldman — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Cutting the Fuse offers a wealth of new knowledge about the origins of suicide terrorism and strategies to stop it. Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman have examined every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009, and the insights they have gleaned from that data fundamentally challenge how we understand the root causes of terrorist campaigns today—and reveal why the War on Terror has been ultimately counterproductive. Through a close analysis of suicide campaigns by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, the authors provide powerful new evidence that, contrary to popular and dangerously mistaken belief, only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks.

Cutting the Fuse calls for new, effective solutions that America and its allies can sustain for decades, relying less on ground troops in Muslim countries and more on offshore, over-the-horizon military forces along with political and economic strategies that empower local communities to stop terrorists in their midst.

Religion of Falun Gong

Benjamin Penny — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In July 1999, a mere seven years after the founding of the religious movement known as the Falun Gong, the Chinese government banned it. Falun Gong is still active in other countries, and its suppression has become a primary concern of human rights activists and is regularly discussed in dealings between the Chinese government and its Western counterparts. But while much has been written on Falun Gong’s relation to political issues, no one has analyzed in depth what its practitioners actually believe and do.

The Religion of Falun Gong remedies that omission, providing the first serious examination of Falun Gong teachings. Benjamin Penny argues that in order to understand Falun Gong, one must grasp the beliefs, practices, and texts of the movement and its founder, Li Hongzhi. Contextualizing Li’s ideas in terms of the centuries-long Chinese tradition of self-cultivation and the cultural world of 1980s and ’90s China—particularly the upwelling of biospiritual activity and the influx of translated works from the Western New Age movement—Penny shows how both have influenced Li’s writings and his broader view of the cosmos. An illuminating look at this controversial movement, The Religion of Falun Gong opens a revealing window into the nature and future of contemporary China.

Authoring the Past

Jaume Aurell — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Authoring the Past surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and politics during the period. Jaume Aurell examines texts from the late twelfth to the late fourteenth century—including the Latin Gesta comitum Barcinonensium and four texts in medieval Catalan: James I’s Llibre dels fets, the Crònica of Bernat Desclot, the Crònica of Ramon Muntaner, and the Crònica of Peter the Ceremonious—and outlines the different motivations for the writing of each.

For Aurell, these chronicles are not mere archaeological artifacts but rather documents that speak to their writers’ specific contemporary social and political purposes. He argues that these Catalonian counts and Aragonese kings were attempting to use their role as authors to legitimize their monarchical status, their growing political and economic power, and their aggressive expansionist policies in the Mediterranean. By analyzing these texts alongside one another, Aurell demonstrates the shifting contexts in which chronicles were conceived, written, and read throughout the Middle Ages.

The first study of its kind to make medieval Catalonian writings available to English-speaking audiences, Authoring the Past will be of interest to scholars of history and comparative literature, students of Hispanic and Romance medieval studies, and medievalists who study the chronicle tradition in other languages.

West of Sex

Pablo Mitchell — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Sex can be an oppressive force, a tool to shame, divide, and control a population. But it can also be a force for change, for the legal and physical challenge of inequity and injustice. In West of Sex, Pablo Mitchell uses court transcripts and criminal cases to provide the first coherent picture of Mexican-American sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century, and a truly revelatory look at sexual identity in the borderlands.

As Mexicans faced a rising tide of racial intolerance in the American West, some found cracks in the legal system that enabled them to assert their rights as full citizens, despite institutional hostility. In these chapters, Mitchell offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of ethnicity and power in the United States, placing ordinary Mexican women and men at the center of the story of American sex, colonialism, and belonging.

Other chapters discuss topics like prostitution, same-sex intimacy, sexual violence, interracial romance, and marriage with an impressive level of detail and complexity. Written in vivid and accessible prose, West of Sex offers readers a new vision of sex and race in American history.

West of Sex

Pablo Mitchell — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Street Therapists

Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Drawing from almost a decade of ethnographic research in largely Brazilian and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, in Street Therapists,examines how affect, emotion, and sentiment serve as waypoints for the navigation of interracial relationships among US-born Latinos, Latin American migrants, blacks, and white ethnics. Tackling a rarely studied dynamic approach to affect, Ramos-Zayas offers a thorough—and sometimes paradoxical—new articulation of race, space, and neoliberalism in US urban communities.

After looking at the historical, political, and economic contexts in which an intensified connection between affect and race has emerged in Newark, New Jersey, Street Therapists engages in detailed examinations of various community sites—including high schools, workplaces, beauty salons, and funeral homes, among others—and secondary sites in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and San Juan to uncover the ways US-born Latinos and Latin American migrants interpret and analyze everyday racial encounters through a language of psychology and emotions. As Ramos-Zayas notes, this emotive approach to race resurrects Latin American and Caribbean ideologies of “racial democracy” in an urban US context—and often leads to new psychological stereotypes and forms of social exclusion. Extensively researched and thoughtfully argued, Street Therapists theorizes the conflictive connection between race, affect, and urban neoliberalism.

Backing into Forward

Jules Feiffer — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Subversive, funny, and effortlessly droll, Jules Feiffer’s cartoons were all over New York in the 1960s and ’70s—featured in the Village Voice, but also cut out and pinned to bulletin boards in offices and on refrigerators at home. Feiffer describes himself as “lucking into the zeitgeist,” and there’s some truth to the sentiment; Feiffer’s brand of satire reflected Americans’ ambivalence about the Vietnam War, changing social mores, and much more.

Feiffer’s memoir, Backing into Forward, like his cartoons, is sharply perceptive with a distinctive bite of mordant humor. Beginning with his childhood in Brooklyn, Feiffer paints a picture of a troubled kid with an overbearing mother and a host of crippling anxieties. From there, he discusses his apprenticeship with his hero, Will Eisner, and his time serving in the military during the Korean War, which saw him both feigning a breakdown and penning a cartoon narrative called “Munro” that solidified his distinctive aesthetic as an artist. While Feiffer’s voice grounds the book, the sheer scope of his artistic accomplishment, from his cartoons turning up in the New Yorker, Playboy, and the Nation to his plays and film scripts, is remarkable and keeps the narrative bouncing along at a speedy clip. A compelling combination of a natural sense of humor and a ruthless dedication to authenticity, Backing into Forward is full of wit and verve, often moving but never sentimental.

“Jules Feiffer’s original and neurotic voice. . . . reinvented comics in the 1950s and made possible what’s now called the ‘graphic novel.’ His engaging new memoir is told in that same witty and perceptive New York cadence, mellowed and laced with wisdom. He’s an inspiration.”—Art Spiegelman

Rational Empires

Leo J. Blanken — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century

John Spitzer — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Studies of concert life in nineteenth-century America have generally been limited to large orchestras and the programs we are familiar with today. But as this book reveals, audiences of that era enjoyed far more diverse musical experiences than this focus would suggest. To hear an orchestra, people were more likely to head to a beer garden, restaurant, or summer resort than to a concert hall. And what they heard weren’t just symphonic works—programs also included opera excerpts and arrangements, instrumental showpieces, comic numbers, and medleys of patriotic tunes.

This book brings together musicologists and historians to investigate the many orchestras and programs that developed in nineteenth-century America. In addition to reflecting on the music that orchestras played and the socioeconomic aspects of building and maintaining orchestras, the book considers a wide range of topics, including audiences, entrepreneurs, concert arrangements, tours, and musicians’ unions. The authors also show that the period saw a massive influx of immigrant performers, the increasing ability of orchestras to travel across the nation, and the rising influence of women as listeners, patrons, and players. Painting a rich and detailed picture of nineteenth-century concert life, this collection will greatly broaden our understanding of America’s musical history.

Street Therapists

Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Lawyers in Practice

Leslie C. Levin; Lynn Mather — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

How do lawyers resolve ethical dilemmas in the everyday context of their practice? What are the issues that commonly arise, and how do lawyers determine the best ways to resolve them? Until recently, efforts to answer these questions have focused primarily on rules and legal doctrine rather than the real-life situations lawyers face in legal practice.

The first book to present empirical research on ethical decision making in a variety of practice contexts, including corporate litigation, securities, immigration, and divorce law, Lawyers in Practice fills a substantial gap in the existing literature. Following an introduction emphasizing the increasing importance of understanding context in the legal profession, contributions focus on ethical dilemmas ranging from relatively narrow ethical issues to broader problems of professionalism, including the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose evidence, the management of conflicts of interest, and loyalty to clients and the court. Each chapter details the resolution of a dilemma from the practitioner’s point of view that is, in turn, set within a particular community of practice. Timely and practical, this book should be required reading for law students as well as students and scholars of law and society.

Dreaming in French

Alice Kaplan — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A year in Paris . . . since World War II, countless American students have been lured by that vision—and been transformed by their sojourn in the City of Light. Dreaming in French tells three stories of that experience, and how it changed the lives of three extraordinary American women.

All three women would go on to become icons, key figures in American cultural, intellectual, and political life, but when they embarked for France, they were young, little-known, uncertain about their future, and drawn to the culture, sophistication, and drama that only Paris could offer. Yet their backgrounds and their dreams couldn’t have been more different. Jacqueline Bouvier was a twenty-year-old debutante, a Catholic girl from a wealthy East Coast family. Susan Sontag was twenty-four, a precocious Jewish intellectual from a North Hollywood family of modest means, and Paris was a refuge from motherhood, a failing marriage, and graduate work in philosophy at Oxford. Angela Davis, a French major at Brandeis from a prominent African American family in Birmingham, Alabama, found herself the only black student in her year abroad program—in a summer when all the news from Birmingham was of unprecedented racial violence.

Kaplan takes readers into the lives, hopes, and ambitions of these young women, tracing their paths to Paris and tracking the discoveries, intellectual adventures, friendships, and loves that they found there. For all three women, France was far from a passing fancy; rather, Kaplan shows, the year abroad continued to influence them, a significant part of their intellectual and cultural makeup, for the rest of their lives. Jackie Kennedy carried her love of France to the White House and to her later career as a book editor, bringing her cultural and linguistic fluency to everything from art and diplomacy to fashion and historic restoration—to the extent that many, including Jackie herself, worried that she might seem “too French.” Sontag found in France a model for the life of the mind that she was determined to lead; the intellectual world she observed from afar during that first year in Paris inspired her most important work and remained a key influence—to be grappled with, explored, and transcended—the rest of her life. Davis, meanwhile, found that her Parisian vantage strengthened her sense of political exile from racism at home and brought a sense of solidarity with Algerian independence. For her, Paris was a city of political commitment, activism, and militancy, qualities that would deeply inform her own revolutionary agenda and soon make her a hero to the French writers she had once studied.

Kaplan, whose own junior year abroad played a prominent role in her classic memoir, French Lessons, spins these three quite different stories into one evocative biography, brimming with the ferment and yearnings of youth and shot through with the knowledge of how a single year—and a magical city—can change a whole life. No one who has ever dreamed of Paris should miss it.

Inventing Chemistry

John C. Powers — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In Inventing Chemistry, historian John C. Powers turns his attention to Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), a Dutch medical and chemical professor whose work reached a wide, educated audience and became the template for chemical knowledge in the eighteenth century. The primary focus of this study is Boerhaave’s educational philosophy, and Powers traces its development from Boerhaave’s early days as a student in Leiden through his publication of the Elementa chemiae in 1732. Powers reveals how Boerhaave restructured and reinterpreted various practices from diverse chemical traditions—including craft chemistry, Paracelsian medical chemistry, and alchemy—shaping them into a chemical course that conformed to the pedagogical and philosophical norms of Leiden’s medical faculty. In doing so, Boerhaave gave his chemistry a coherent organizational structure and philosophical foundation and thus transformed an artisanal practice into an academic discipline. Inventing Chemistry will be essential reading for historians of chemistry, medicine, and academic life.

Divine Interiors

Eric M. Moormann — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Mighty marble facades, sculptures, and wall paintings played an important role in the decoration of Greek and Roman temples. While the official temples, which were connected with a city or a state, usually had a simple but solemn appearance, the more popular buildings were true multi-colored expressions of religiosity. Scenes from the life of the revered deity, portraits of the supporters and practitioners of the cult, and renderings of plants and animals could transport visitors to these shrines to different worlds. The wall paintings displayed differences in style and taste, but they had the same basic look everywhere. It is striking to see the similarities between temples that were widely separated in the vast Greco-Roman world.

Drawing on archaeological remains and texts of antiquity, Divine Interiors fills a void in Greek and Roman studies by exploring a large variety of decorative schemes and fashions all over the ancient world and by shedding light on the devotional practices of worshippers and the use of shrines and temples in daily life.

Diversity Research and Policy

Steven Knotter; Rob de Lobel; Lena Tsipouri; Vanja Stenius — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This volume emerged from a collaborative Network of Excellence project funded by the European Commission. The Network, which comprises thirty-two institutes from Europe and beyond, integrates European research capabilities across disciplines and countries to provide the society and the state with tools for managing cultural diversity as a key element of sustainable development. The work presented here describes the emergence and increasing importance of diversity within academic research and practice and offers valuable insights on diversity management and policy implementation.

Inside Installations

Tatja Scholte; Glenn Wharton — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Anything is possible in installation art—but that freedom comes with a cost, as the mutability of the intended experience along with the typically short lifespan of the techniques and materials used can present great difficulty to the custodian of the work. This important and practical book examines the processes involved in preserving this complex form of art, reinstalling it, and finding ways to re-create the original experience of the work. Edited by the media conservator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the program manager at the Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE) in the Netherlands, this book offers a fascinating glimpse at the decisions and processes behind some of the world’s most innovative art installations.

World Film Locations: Istanbul

Özlem Köksal — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From Head-On to Murder on the Orient Express, World Film Locations: Istanbul offers a compelling look at the many films shot on location in this multicultural metropolis on the Black Sea. Central to this volume are the film industry’s changing representations of Istanbul, which have ranged from progressive cultural center to the authoritarian police state of Alan Parker’s Midnight Express. Evident in both in films made in the West and throughout Turkey over time, these divergent accounts are analyzed with regard to their role in continually reshaping our perception of the city. Essays explore this topic and many others, including the significance of Istanbul to the works of critically-acclaimed directors, among them Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Illustrated throughout with film stills as well as photographs of featured locations as they appear today, World Film Locations: Istanbul visits all of the important cinematic landmarks, including the Topkapi Palace and the Haydarpasa train station and offers a vivid picture of this historic and culturally stimulating city.

Jandavlattepa, Vol. I

Ladislav Stanco; Kazim Abdullaev — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition

Vince Dziekan — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Digital technologies are playing an increasingly instrumental role in guiding the curatorial and institutional strategies of contemporary art museums today. Designed around contextual studies of virtuality and the art of exhibition, this interdisciplinary volume applies practice-based research to a broad range of topics, including digital mediation, spatial practice, the multimedia museum, and curatorial design. Rounding out the volume are case studies with accompanying illustrations.

Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity Revisited

Josh Lerner; Scott Stern — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

While the importance of innovation to economic development is widely understood, the conditions conducive to it remain the focus of much attention. This volume offers new theoretical and empirical contributions to fundamental questions relating to the economics of innovation and technological change while revisiting the findings of a classic book. Central to the development of new technologies are institutional environments, and among the topics discussed here are the roles played by universities and other nonprofit research institutions and the ways in which the allocation of funds between the public and private sectors affects innovation. Other essays examine the practice of open research and how the diffusion of information technology influences the economics of knowledge accumulation. Analytically sophisticated and broad in scope, this book addresses a key topic at a time when economic growth is all the more topical.

Romance of the Middle Ages

Nicholas Perkins; Alison Wiggins — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From chivalrous knights to damsels in distress, fire-breathing dragons, and high-walled towers, the characteristics and expectations we ascribe to stories of love and romance have their origins in some of the most beautiful and intriguing books of the Middle Ages. Encompassing Arthurian legends, Alexander the Great’s global conquests, sudden reversals of fortune, revenge, or enchantment, images and tales of medieval romance still resonate today. This beautifully illustrated history of romance legends explores the conjunctions of chivalric violence, love, sex, and piety that marked these striking and resonant stories.

Through a discussion of surviving manuscripts, printed books, and visual art, The Romance of the Middle Ages examines the development of romance as a literary genre, its place in medieval culture, and the scribes and readers who copied, owned, and commented on romance books—from magnificent illuminated manuscripts to personal notebooks. It describes the dangerous pull of desire in works by Dante, Chaucer, Malory, and many others, and traces the influence of these stories through their rewriting in Shakespeare, Spenser, Walter Scott, and Mark Twain, along with the medievalist visions of Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones. The Romance of the Middle Ages then brings the story up to date by showing how later writers and artists have responded to medieval romance, including Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and J. K. Rowling, and the very different knightly casts of Monty Python and Star Wars.

The Romance of the Middle Ages is an engaging analysis of stories that still have the power to capture our imaginations long after ‘happily ever after’.

British South Asian Theatres

Graham Ley; Sarah Dadswell — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

British South Asian theater has been one of the most significant features of diasporic artistic activity throughout the world in the last thirty years, yet its remarkable achievements have been largely ignored by mainstream media and scholars. With British South Asian Theatres, Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell aim to reverse such neglect. Drawing on unpublished archives and an extensive series of interviews on the history of British theater, these essays document the presence of South Asians on the British stage, from magicians of the nineteenth century to the performers of today. A companion DVD enhances the text, showcasing historical documents, programs, designs, photographs, and clips from recordings of rehearsals and productions.

British South Asian Theatres

Graham Ley; Sarah Dadswell — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Understanding "Race" and Ethnicity

Gary Craig; Karl Atkin; Ronny Flynn; Sangeeta Chattoo — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Most societies in the developed world are now multicultural, but their welfare systems have largely failed to address the issues and tensions associated with the growth of minority ethnic populations. Taking the United Kingdom as an exemplary case study, Understanding “Race” and Ethnicity combines historical and theoretical approaches to the study of the intersection of race and welfare and examines how minorities experience welfare in a range of settings. Informative and inspiring, this book will be essential for anyone striving to build a society that is equal, inclusive, and just for all.

Understanding "Race" and Ethnicity

Gary Craig; Karl Atkin; Ronny Flynn; Sangeeta Chattoo — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

World of Gardens

John Dixon Hunt — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A Japanese garden is immediately distinct to the eye from the traditional gardens of an English manor house, just as the manicured topiaries of Versailles contrast with the sharp cacti of the American Southwest. Though gardening is beloved the world over, the style of gardens themselves varies from region to region, determined as much by culture as climate. In this series of illustrated essays, John Dixon Hunt takes us on a world tour of different periods in the making of gardens.

Hunt shows here how cultural assumptions and local geography have shaped gardens and their meaning. He explores our continuing responses to land and reworkings of the natural world, encompassing a broad range of gardens, from ancient Roman times to early Islamic and Mughal gardens, from Chinese and Japanese gardens to the invention of the public park and modern landscape architecture. A World of Gardens looks at key chapters in garden history, reviewing their significance past and present and tracing the recurrence of different themes and motifs in the design and reception of gardens throughout the world.

A World of Gardens celebrates the idea that similar experiences of gardens can be found in many different times and places, including sacred landscapes, scientific gardens, urban gardens, secluded gardens, and symbolic gardens. Featuring two hundred images, this book is a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration, whether your garden is a window box, a secluded backyard, or a daydream.

Brit Wits

Iain Ellis — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The Sex Pistols. David Bowie. Pink Floyd. Rebel rockers and provokers of the public, vivid in our memories as much for their subversion of the mainstream as for their signature sounds. Yet what very few people realize is that a substantive part of the weaponry used by these rockers and their contemporaries was humor: outrageous onstage antics, coded cultural references, and clever lyrical constructs were all critical to expressions of youth rebellion that could still slip past the powers that be.

Focusing on key subversive rock humorists, Brit Wits shows how and why humor has been such a powerful catalyst and expressive force in these artists’ work. Distinguishing rock humorists from rockers who are merely sometimes humorous, Iain Ellis trains his attention on those whose music and persona exude defiance—beginning with the Beatles, the Kinks, and Pink Floyd; and continuing through the Smiths, the Slits, and even the Spice Girls—to investigate the nature of rock humor and the ways in which these groups have used it to attack prevailing social structures. Politics and issues of gender, class, and race are all laid open to ridicule, as is the music industry itself—epitomized by the Sex Pistols’s scathing “EMI.” And although lyrics are foregrounded, Ellis demonstrates that a guitar solo, dissident dance move, or antisocial hairstyle may in context be every bit as subversive and humorous as a song.

At once an action-packed look at some of the most notorious rebels of British rock history and a celebration of an underexplored area of humor, Brit Wits compiles essays and critical profiles that look at one of the most effective—and entertaining—means of anti-establishment expression for half a century.

Travel: A Literary History

Peter Whitfield — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Taking the form of fact-filled travelogues, stunt-writing spectaculars, or genre-blurring imaginative works, travel writing has never been more popular than it is today. But beyond the self-conscious literary artistry of today’s narratives lies a rich and well-documented history of travel writing, stretching back over several thousand years and incorporating the work of mariners and missionaries, diplomats and dilettantes alike.

From the ancient world to the present, Peter Whitfield offers the first broad survey to range over the whole history of travel writing, highlighting more than one hundred texts, including works by Marco Polo, T. E. Lawrence, Christopher Columbus, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, and Captain Cook. Whether their travels were merely for pleasure or the result of exploration, military occupation, or trade, the writers discussed here all sought to reimagine their surroundings and, through their writings, reinterpret them for the reader. Because of that personal, interpretive approach, Whitfield shows, their work inhabits a strange borderland between fact and fiction. Over time, as our travel objectives have changed, so too has the tone of travel writing, eschewing the traditional stance of cultural superiority in favor of a deeper sensitivity to other peoples and places. The book is rounded out by numerous illustrations from manuscripts and books of travel in the collection of the Bodleian Library.

A world-class examination of a little-explored genre, Travel: A Literary History offers an accessible look at the history of travel writing that will make a great addition to any carry-on.

Superstitions

Francis Grose — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Superstitions are surprisingly enduring. From dodging black cats to crossing one’s fingers while making a wish to an aversion to staff meetings on Friday the thirteenth, it is remarkable how many superstitions remain intact—even in this age of rationalism and swift scientific advancement.

First published in 1787 as part of the disparate collection A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs, and Popular Superstitions, Francis Grose’s Superstitions represents years of careful data collection and fieldwork and presents a full catalog of ways the supernatural might be expected to interfere in one’s life. Organized thematically into chapters like “Witches, Sorcerers, and Witchcraft,” “Things Lucky and Unlucky,” “Second Sight,” “Omens,” and “Superstitious Methods of Obtaining a Knowledge of Future Events,” Superstitions offers a systematic overview of the superstitious beliefs of the day as well as those held by earlier generations. Here, Grose’s work is reproduced under its original headings and supplemented by an informative introduction by Oxford English Dictionary editor John Simpson, setting the superstitions in proper historical and cultural context.

The resulting collection is a delightfully quirky guide to traditional sayings and beliefs, many archaic but some still surprisingly common today.

Europe and Love in Cinema

Jo Labanyi; Luisa Passerini; Karen Diehl — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Europe and Love in Cinema explores the relationship between love and Europeanness in a wide range of films from the 1920s to the present. A critical look at the manner in which love—in its broadest sense—is portrayed in cinema from across Europe and the United States, this volume exposes constructed notions of "Europeanness" that both set Europe apart and define some parts of it as more "European" than others. Through the international distribution process, these films in turn engage with ideas of Europe from both outside and within, while some, treated extensively in this volume, even offer alternative models of love. A bracing collection of essays from top film scholars, Europe and Love in Cinema demonstrates the centrality of desire to film narrative and explores multiple models of love within Europe's frontiers.

Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2

John Berra — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Building on and bringing up to date the material presented in the first installment of Directory of World Cinema: Japan, this volume continues the exploration of the enduring classics, cult favorites, and contemporary blockbusters of Japanese cinema with new contributions from leading critics and film scholars. Among the additions to this volume are in-depth treatments of two previously unexplored genres—youth cinema and films depicting lower-class settings—considered alongside discussions of popular narrative forms, including J-Horror, samurai cinema, anime, and the Japanese New Wave.

Accompanying the critical essays in this volume are more than 150 new film reviews, complemented by full-color film stills, and significantly expanded references for further study. From the Golden Age to the film festival favorites of today, Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 completes this comprehensive treatment of a consistently fascinating national cinema.

Memory Fragments

Marita Bullock — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Taking as its starting point four contemporary visual artists whose work utilizes the conventions of museum display and collecting practices, Memory Fragments examines how these artists have reconfigured dominant representations of Australian history and identity, including viewpoints often marginalized by gender and race. Echoing Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history and time, this interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars working in the arts as well as modern and postmodern cultural studies.

World Film Locations: Madrid

Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

From Death of a Cyclist to Open Your Eyes to The Limits of Control, Madrid has graced the big screen countless times across a wide variety of genres enacted by a similarly eclectic array of directors, including Carlos Saura, Luis Buñuel, and Pedro Almodovar. With the aim of capturing the full range of portrayals of the city onscreen, this volume pairs short synopses of scenes from fifty films with an accompanying array of dynamic full-color film stills. These scenes are set in context through a series of incisive essays that examine significant periods from Madrid’s rich film history, as well as its key industry figures and recurring themes.

Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Robert Bird — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, The Idiot—the complex and prolific Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) is responsible for some of our greatest literary works and most fascinating characters. Praised by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, he is also acknowledged by critics to be a preeminent writer of psychological fiction and a precursor of the twentieth-century existentialism. Set in the troubled political and social world of nineteenth-century Russia, Dostoevsky’s stories were shaped by the great suffering and difficult life the author himself experienced. Robert Bird explores these influences in this new biography of the prominent Russian author.

Bird traces Dostoevsky’s path from his harsh childhood through his years as a political revolutionary and finally to his development into a writer, who fought his battles through the printed word. Delving into Dostoevsky’s youth, Bird reveals his struggles with epilepsy and his despotic treatment at the hands of his father, a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow. Bird reveals how Dostoevsky, who championed the downtrodden throughout his career, first came into contact with the poor and oppressed through the hospital. He then outlines the years after Dostoevsky’s arrest and near-execution for being a member of an underground liberal intellectual group in 1849, detailing his subsequent exile with hard labor in Siberia and compulsory service in the army. As Bird illuminates how these grueling experiences contributed to the writing of novels like Notes from the Underground, he also describes how they instilled in the author a craving for social justice and quest for form that spurred his literary achievements. A fascinating look at this major writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky will pique the interest of any lover of literature.

Welsh Ballads of the French Revolution

Ffion Mair Jones — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Welsh Ballads of the French Revolution is a collection of ballads composed in reaction to the momentous events of the French Revolution and the two decades of war that followed. Ballad writers first responded in 1793, when the French monarchs were executed and France declared war upon Britain, but as the decade proceeded, sang in thanks for the victory of British forces and to the extensive mobilization of militia and volunteer forces. This volume, complete with parallel English translations of the original Welsh texts and copious contextualizing notes, introduces readers to this telling corpus for the first time and to a host of little-known authors.

Engendering Interaction with Images

Audrey G. Bennett — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

No longer passive spectators of images, these days we are more likely to be active participants in their production, distribution, and consumption—which raises important questions about the consequences of widespread user interaction on meaning, communicative effectiveness, and society at large. In this groundbreaking book, communication expert Audrey Grace Bennett argues that engendering interaction with images actually improves their effectiveness by enabling images to convey meanings effectively across cultures. At the cutting edge of the visual and communicative arts, this book represents a welcome challenge to the way we think about how images convey meaning.

Octave Mirbeau: Two Plays

Richard J. Hand — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Octave Mirbeau was one of the most prolific literary figures of France’s storied Belle Époque, and his innovative theatrical works are only recently being rediscovered and appreciated by modern audiences. Here for the first time in English-language translation are his two most celebrated and successful plays: Business is Business, a classical comedy of manners recalling Molière; and Charity, a satirical comedy centered around the exploitation of adolescents in a dubious charity home. In addition to the play texts, this volume also includes an introduction contextualizing the works and the translation and adaptation process.

World Film Locations: Las Vegas

Marcelline Block — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers—and starry-eyed lovers—each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators, and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there.

A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas’s appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect’sWorld Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films—from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans 11 to acclaimed classics Rain Man, Casino, and The Godfather to cult favorites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas, the cinematized Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction, and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today.

World Film Locations: Las Vegas goes beyond the clichés of Sin City to examine what Hal Rothman and Mike Davis called “the grit beneath the glitter,” thus providing an opportunity to find out more about the unique position Vegas occupies in the popular imagination.

Abu Hatim al-Razi: The Proofs of Prophecy

Tarif Khalidi — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This book is the record of a debate that took place in the early tenth century between the famous Ismaili missionary Abu Hatim al-Razi and the even more celebrated Abu Bakr al-Razi , a physician and philosopher who was known to medieval Europe as “Rhazes.” These two were towering figures of premodern Islamic thought, and their debate over the dogmatic lines between Sunni and Shi’i theological positions serves to illuminate some of the most intellectually exciting topics of medieval Islamic culture. Abu Hatim, in particular, marshals evidence for his position from the Quran, the hadith, and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry as well as from the Jewish and Christian scriptures. This fresh, vivid debate still holds excitement for modern readers who are interested not merely in medieval Islam but in Christian thought as well.

Dole Queues and Demons

Stuart Ball — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Bold amalgams of graphic design, psychology, and art, election posters have remained unsung—and sometimes even maligned—since their inception at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a careful selection from among the more than seven hundred posters in the Bodleian Library’s Conservative Party Archive, this lavishly illustrated volume charts the evolution of the election posters created by Britain’s Conservative Party.

Organized chronologically and by political period, each chapter begins with a brief introduction highlighting the major themes of the period as well as the specific issues individual posters were designed to engage. Together, the chapters demonstrate the changing fashions in and attitudes toward advertising, political ideology, and standards of acceptability in the election poster, and they offer fascinating insight into the strategies of the Conservative Party up to the present day. Rounding out the discussion is a foreword by advertising tycoon Maurice Saatchi, who discusses the posters from a communications and design perspective.

At a time when the new media seems poised to put an end to more traditional forms of mass communication, Dole Queues and Demons offers a timely retrospective of an enduring feature of the British electoral landscape.

Laughing at Leviathan

Danilyn Rutherford — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

For West Papua and its people, the promise of sovereignty has never been realized, despite a long and fraught struggle for independence from Indonesia. In Laughing at Leviathan, Danilyn Rutherford examines this struggle through a series of interlocking essays that drive at the core meaning of sovereignty itself—how it is fueled, formed, and even thwarted by pivotal but often overlooked players: those that make up an audience. Whether these players are citizens, missionaries, competing governmental powers, nongovernmental organizations, or the international community at large, Rutherford shows how a complex interplay of various observers is key to the establishment and understanding of the sovereign nation-state.

Drawing on a wide array of sources, from YouTube videos to Dutch propaganda to her own fieldwork observations, Rutherford draws the history of Indonesia, empire, and postcolonial nation-building into a powerful examination of performance and power. Ultimately she revises Thomas Hobbes, painting a picture of the Leviathan not as a coherent body but a fragmented one distributed across a wide range of both real and imagined spectators. In doing so, she offers an important new approach to the understanding of political struggle.

Laughing at Leviathan

Danilyn Rutherford — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Obama and the Biracial Factor

Andrew J. Jolivette — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Since 2008 there has been a flowering of books, films, and articles about the role of race in the election of the first person of color to the White House. Surprisingly, none of these works has delved into the multifaceted meanings of Barack Obama’s biracial background. The first book to explore the role of Obama’s mixed-race identity in his path to the presidency, Obama and the Biracial Factor also offers a broad but penetrating view of the importance of race and multiraciality in the ongoing development of American politics at home and abroad.

In a series of timely essays, an esteemed group of contributors brings biracial identity to the forefront of our understanding of the Obama administration’s policies on race. In laying out new frameworks for thinking about multiraciality in a globalized context, these innovative essays challenge us to contemplate the crucial differences between striving for a “postracist” rather than a “postracial” society.Drawing from a wide array of disciplines—from political science and public policy to sociology and ethnic studies—Obama and the Biracial Factor provides novel insights into issues such as equity, social justice, and political reform.

Obama and the Biracial Factor

Andrew J. Jolivette — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Between Stillness and Motion

Eivind Røssaak — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Since the development of film as an artistic medium in the 1890s, there has been an inherent tension between still photographic images and moving cinematic images, from their form and function to the messages they convey and their impact on the beholder and on culture at large. This volume, one of the first book-length works to analyze, critique, and further the international debate about the meaning and use of motion and stillness in film and photography, takes these concepts out of the theoretical arena of cinematic studies and applies them to the wider and ever-changing landscape of images and media.

With contributions from such acclaimed international scholars as Tom Gunning, Thomas Elsaesser, Mark B. N. Hansen, George Baker, Ina Blom, and Christa Blümlinger, these collected essays examine the strategic uses of stillness and motion in art from the mid-nineteenth century to the technologically driven present.

Between Stillness and Motion

Eivind Røssaak — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Greek Cinema

Yannis Tzioumakis; Lydia Papadimitriou — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Covering the silent era to the present, this wide-ranging collection of essays examines Greek cinema as an aesthetic, cultural, and political phenomenon with the potential to appeal to a diverse range of audiences. Using a range of methodological tools, the authors investigate the ever-shifting forms and meanings at work within Greece’s national cinema and locate it within the booming interdisciplinary study of European cinema at large. Designed for undergraduate courses in film studies, this well-researched volume fills a substantial gap in the market for critical works on Greek cinema in English.

Peter Weir

Serena Formica — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Peter Weir has been directing Hollywood films since his successful US debut, Witness, in 1985. But does this make him a Hollywood director? Or should he still be considered an Australian filmmaker as many scholars argue?

For the first time, Weir’s entire three-decade creative journey from Australia to Hollywood is considered in light of the recent theories on transnational cinema and through a close examination of four key films: Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, and The Truman Show The films’ analyses integrate original interviews with Weir and his closest collaborators, including Russell Boyd. The book concludes that Weir is both an Australian and a Hollywood filmmaker—and would be better seen as a transnational filmmaker whose success in the United States reflects the fact that he was already a “Hollywood” director by the time he relocated.

Season of Rains

Stephen Ellis; Desmond Tutu — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Africa is playing a more important role in world affairs than ever before. Yet the most common images of Africa in the American mind are ones of poverty, starvation, and violent conflict. But while these problems are real, that does not mean that Africa is a lost cause. Instead, as Stephen Ellis explains in Season of Rains, we need to rethink Africa’s place in time if we are to understand it in all its complexity—it is a region where growth and prosperity coexist with failed states. This engaging, accessible book by one of the world’s foremost researchers on Africa captures the broad spectrum of political, economic, and social foundations that make Africa what it is today.

Ellis is careful not to position himself in the futile debate between Afro-optimists and Afro-pessimists. The forty-nine diverse nations that make up sub-Saharan Africa are neither doomed to fail nor destined to succeed. As he assesses the challenges of African sovereignties, Ellis is not under the illusion that governments will suddenly become more benevolent and less corrupt. Yet, he sees great dynamism in recent technological and economic developments. The proliferation of mobile phones alone has helped to overcome previous gaps in infrastructure, African retail markets are becoming integrated, and banking is expanding. Businesses from China and emerging powers from the West are investing more than ever before in the still land-rich region, and globalization is offering possibilities of enormous economic change for the growing population of one billion Africans, actively engaged in charting the future of their continent.

This highly readable survey of the continent today offers an indispensable guide to how money, power, and development are shaping Africa’s future.

Changing Political Economies of Small West European Countries

Uwe Becker — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

This important volume sheds light on a group of smaller European countries, often overlooked in economic discussions, that share a high degree of corporatism—Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The contributors to this book investigate the various trajectories of these countries’ economies, with particular consideration devoted to their welfare systems, corporate governance, and labor markets from the early 1990s to the economic crisis of 2008. Importantly, The Changing Political Economies of Small West European Countries also investigates various nations as possible socio-economic models for pan-European capitalism.