Weekly Book List, August 3, 2018

AMERICAN STUDIES

Constituting Central American--Americans: Transnational Identities and the Politics of Dislocation by Maritza E. Cardenas (Rutgers University Press; 198 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines historical and other conditions that have shaped Central Americans’ identity in the United States.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park by James S. Bielo (New York University Press; 240 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Traces the interplay of religion and entertainment in an ethnographic study of the planning, development, and mission of Ark Encounter, a creationist theme park in northern Kentucky.

Mexicans in Alaska: An Ethnography of Mobility, Place, and Transnational Life by Sara V. Komarnisky (University of Nebraska Press; 268 pages; $60 hardcover, $30 paperback). An ethnographic study of a community formed by three generations of migrants who have moved between Acuitzio del Canje, Michoacan, and Anchorage since the 1950s.

Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace edited by Kirsten W. Endres and Ann Marie Leshkowich (Cornell University Press; 264 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback). Essays by scholars in anthropology, political science, and developmental sociology on how the emerging capitalist market in Vietnam is shaped through the interactions of street traders and others.

Transforming Therapy: Mental Health Practice and Cultural Change in Mexico by Whitney L. Duncan (Vanderbilt University Press; 254 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of what is termed “psy-globalization” that examines the rise and transformation of Euro-American-style mental-health practices in Oaxaca.

Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods edited by April Mandrona and Claudia Mitchell (Rutgers University Press; 240 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $37.95 paperback). Themes include rural childhoods (both real and imagined) as depicted through different visual media; the use of “memory work” to explore experiences of growing up rural; and visual research with rural children.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Environmental Design: Architecture, Politics, and Science in Postwar America by Avigail Sachs (University of Virginia Press; 240 pages; $39.50). Traces the theoretical and practical history, since the 1930s, of a movement to link architecture to evolving scientific understandings of humans and their environments.

Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans edited by Teresa A. Toulouse and Barbara C. Ewell (University Press of Mississippi; 272 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses architecture, literature, music, and other realms in essays on interstitial or in-between spaces in the city.

COMMUNICATION

Bright Signals: A History of Color Television by Susan Murray (Duke University Press; 328 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Traces the history of color television from its first demonstration, in 1928, to widespread ownership of color sets by 1970; topics include how color TV was imagined and sold as a new form of seeing.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Dilemma of Duties: The Conflicted Role of Juvenile Defenders by Anne M. Corbin (Southern Illinois University Press; 224 pages; $35). Examines the conflicts experienced by defense attorneys in juvenile courts in North Carolina, where counselors are required to advocate for their client’s wishes even if they believe it is not in the client’s best interest.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the Underground by Yetta Howard (University of Illinois Press; 224 pages; $99 hardcover, $28 paperback). Draws on underground literary, cinematic, and other culture in a study of what is termed queer female sexuality’s symbiotic relationship with ugliness.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Ecological Restoration in the Midwest: Past, Present, and Future edited by Christian Lenhart and Peter C. Smiley Jr. (University of Iowa Press; 290 pages; $45). Presents six case studies that examine 30 restoration efforts in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio.

FILM STUDIES

The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives edited by Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel (University of New Mexico Press; 274 pages; $75). Essays on Eastwood that pay particular attention to his directorial work and his controversial 2014 film American Sniper.

Out of Sync & Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture by Joel Burges (Rutgers University Press; 204 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). A study of 21st century films and novels that depict the obsolescence of labor; works discussed include the novel (Brian Selznick) and film adaptation (Martin Scorsese) of The Invention of Hugo Cabret; Rich Moore’s Wreck-It Ralph, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, and China Mieville’s Iron Council.

Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution by Nadia Yaqub (University of Texas Press; 280 pages; $95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Focuses on the 1970s in a study of the films, filmmakers, and practices of Palestinian cinema as a movement within the national liberation struggle of a stateless people.

Soundies Jukebox Films and the Shift to Small-Screen Culture by Andrea J. Kelley (Rutgers University Press; 240 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Discusses short musical films that viewers could watch for a dime in the 1940s on the small screens of Panoram visual-jukeboxes, installed in bars, bowling alleys, train stations, and other venues.

FOLKLORE

Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative by Kate Parker Horigan (University Press of Mississippi; 144 pages; $70). Focuses on the 2005 hurricane in a study of how disaster survivors represent themselves and are represented in the public arena.

The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia by Joseph Grim Feinberg (University of Wisconsin Press; 184 pages; $69.95). Uses a study of young, urban, folk-dance enthusiasts in Slovakia to examine ways in which the authentic in folklore is identified, defined, represented, and revived.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics by Myrl Beam (University of Minnesota Press; 256 pages; $100 hardcover, $25 paperback). Focuses on the LGBT movement in a study of how the expansion of the nonprofit system since the 1960s has both helped and hindered activism; case studies include LGBT nonprofits in Chicago and Minneapolis as they experience the contradictions between radicalism and institutionalization.

GENDER STUDIES

Authenticity Guaranteed: Masculinity and the Rhetoric of Anti-Consumerism in American Culture by Sally Robinson (University of Massachusetts Press; 239 pages; $90 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Discusses literature, popular culture, academe, and other realms in a study of the gender and class assumptions that have shaped anti-consumerist discourse since the mid-20th century.

HISTORY

Banana Cowboys: The United Fruit Company and the Culture of Corporate Colonialism by James W. Martin (University of New Mexico Press; 264 pages; $65). Focuses on white “company men” who worked as skilled labor and in white-collar jobs in the tropics.

Children of Hope: The Odyssey of the Oromo Slaves From Ethiopia to South Africa by Sandra Rowoldt Shell (Ohio University Press; 353 pages; $75). Offers a group biography of 64 children who were enslaved in Ethiopia in the late 19th century, liberated by the British Navy, and sent to a Free Church of Scotland mission in the Eastern Cape; draws on the children’s own accounts as recorded shortly after their liberation.

Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture by Justin A. Nystrom (University of Georgia Press; 264 pages; $79.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Covers the mid-1830s to the 1970s in a study of how Sicilian immigrants have shaped the city’s foodways; argues for their inclusion with the African, French, and Spanish influences that define creole.

The Finger of God: Enoch Mgijima, the Israelites, and the Bulhoek Massacre in South Africa by Robert R. Edgar (University of Virginia Press; 264 pages; $45). Examines the origins, events, aftermath, and legacy of a massacre that occurred on May 24, 1921, when a well-armed force of some 800 white policemen and soldiers confronted some three thousand of Mgijima’s followers, poorly armed, who had been assembled by the African prophet in the village of Ntabelanga to await the end of the world.

Ideals of the Body: Architecture, Urbanism, and Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris by Sun-Young Park (University of Pittsburgh Press; 384 pages; $49.95). Discusses gymnasiums, swimming pools, new green spaces, and other sites created in efforts between 1800 and 1850 to reform the health and hygiene of the urban subject.

In the Year of the Tiger: The War for Cochinchina, 1945--1951 by William M. Waddell III (University of Oklahoma Press; 264 pages; $34.95). A study of France’s southern campaign in the Indochina war.

The Know Nothings in Louisiana by Marius M. Carriere Jr. (University Press of Mississippi; 208 pages; $70). Traces the rise and fall of the nativist movement and party in the state, where it attracted some Roman Catholic members despite the Know Nothings’ national reputation as anti-Catholic.

“The Most Complete Political Machine Ever Known": The North’s Union Leagues in the American Civil War by Paul Taylor (Kent State University Press; 336 pages; $45). Traces the impact of the Union Leagues---semi-secret societies whose members pledged unconditional loyalty to the Lincoln administration and worked to ensure support for the war and Democratic electoral defeat.

Murder in Merida, 1792: Violence, Factions, and the Law by Mark W. Lentz (University of New Mexico Press; 328 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Uses the 1792 murder of the top royal official in Merida, Yucatan, to examine Bourbon reforms and late colonial Yucatecan society.

Paving the Way for Reagan: The Influence of Conservative Media on US Foreign Policy by Laurence R. Jurdem (University Press of Kentucky; 280 pages; $45). Focuses on Commentary, Human Events, and National Review in a study of how conservative media shaped GOP views on foreign policy in the 1960s and 70s, laying the foundations for Reagan’s peace-through-strength approach.

Politics in Uniform: Military Officers and Dictatorship in Brazil, 1960-80 by Maud Chirio (University of Pittsburgh Press; 288 pages; $28.95). Combines interview and archival data in a study documenting the clandestine political activities of lower-ranking officers during the period of military rule.

Reims on Fire: War and Reconciliation Between France and Germany by Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Getty Research Institute; 296 pages; $55). Documents the influence of artists and intellectuals in a study of how the German shelling of the Reims Cathedral in September 1914 figured in cultural tensions for decades to come.

Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth-Century American South by Marie S. Molloy (University of South Carolina Press; 240 pages; $39.99). Draws on the letters and diaries of more than 300 women in a study of agency and constraint in the lives of widowed, unmarried, or otherwise single slave-holding white women in the pre- to post-Civil War South.

Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War by Christopher Grasso (Oxford University Press; 649 pages; $34.95). Discusses religious skepticism as an under-recognized force in the period’s politics and society.

Thumbing a Ride: Hitchhikers, Hostels, and Counterculture in Canada by Linda Mahood (University of British Columbia Press; 344 pages; US$89.95). Discusses adventure hitchhiking and hosteling in Canada in the 1970s and how and why authorities came to clamp down on what had been a flourishing subculture.

Traumatic Defeat: POWs, MIAs, and National Mythmaking by Patrick Gallagher (University Press of Kansas; 200 pages; $29.95). Compares West German and American manifestations of what is termed the “secret camp myth” of soldiers secretly held captive in, respectively, the Soviet Union after World War II and Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War.

Women and the American Civil War: North-South Counterpoints edited by Judith Giesberg and Randall M. Miller (Kent State University Press; 386 pages; $49.95). Offers paired essays on women’s wartime and Reconstruction-era experiences, North and South; topics include family, mobilization, religion, politics, emancipation, relief, and postwar memory.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Making Stars Physical: The Astronomy of Sir John Herschel by Stephen Case (University of Pittsburgh Press; 328 pages; $39.95). A study of the English astronomer (1792-1871) that emphasizes his contributions beyond simply a continuation of the work of his father, the German-born astronomer and composer William Herschel; focuses on the younger Herschel’s work on the nature of stars.

JOURNALISM

Before Journalism Schools: How Gilded Age Reporters Learned the Rules by Randall S. Sumpter (University of Missouri Press; 175 pages; $35). Uses the model known as Communities of Practice to examine how cub reporters in the late 19th century learned the conventions of interviewing and writing as well as the rules governing proscribed “delinquent” behavior.

LAW

Child Labor in America: The Epic Legal Struggle to Protect Children by John A. Fliter (University Press of Kansas; 320 pages; $45 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Traces the history of child-labor law since individual states’ measures in the 1840s.

Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice: Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and Chronicling edited by Nanci Adler (Rutgers University Press; 250 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Writings on institutionalized practices for confronting genocide, political violence, and historical injustice; topics include the international criminal-trial record as historical source, collective and “competitive” victimhood in the former Yugoslavia, and truth recovery via conditional amnesty.

LITERATURE

America’s Vietnam: The “Longue Duree” of U.S. Literature and Empire by Marguerite Nguyen (Temple University Press; 252 pages; $99.50 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Discusses Vietnam in the American imagination through writings in varied genres as far back as the 1820s.

Cultures of War in Graphic Novels: Violence, Trauma, and Memory edited by Tatiana Prorokova and Nimrod Tal (Rutgers University Press; 230 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Focuses on graphic novels depicting small-scale conflicts, including the Boxer Rebellion, the Irish struggle for independence, the Falklands War, the Bosnian War, and the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.

The Faun’s Bookshelf: C. S. Lewis on Why Myth Matters by Charlie W. Starr (Kent State University Press; 204 pages; $16.95). A study of the English writer’s theory of myth, including ideas suggested by titles he made up for Mr. Tumnus’s bookshelf in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Fictions of Western American Domesticity: Indian, Mexican, and Anglo Women in Print Culture, 1850--1950 by Amanda J. Zink (University of New Mexico Press; 339 pages; $75). Discusses novels, memoirs, Indian boarding-school narratives, and Mexican-American cookbooks in a study of how women navigate ideologies of domesticity.

Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana edited and translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena (University of New Mexico Press; 386 pages; $75). Translation of the correspondence between the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet and diplomat Mistral (1889-1957) and her companion and executor Dana (1920-2006); documents their relationship as lovers from 1948 onward.

John Okada: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of “No-No Boy” edited by Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung (University of Washington Press; 376 pages; $29.95). Writings on the life and work of the Japanese-American author (1923-71), whose 1957 novel on a Japanese-American draft resister became a widely read account of the Nisei experience upon reissue in 1976.

Making the Poem: Stevens’ Approaches by George S. Lensing (Louisiana State University Press; 264 pages; $47). A critical study of Wallace Stevens that examines the development, composition, and reception of his work; pays particular attention to “Sea Surface Full of Clouds,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” and “Mozart, 1935.”

The Once and Future Muse: The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat by Nancy Kang and Silvio Torres-Saillant (University of Pittsburgh Press; 296 pages; $28.95). A critical study of the Dominican-born American poet and translator (b. 1932).

The Portrayal of Jews in Modern Bielarusian Literature by Zina J. Gimpelevich (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 528 pages; US$95). Argues that Bielorussian literature has displayed a more consistent sympathy and tolerance for Jews than has been acknowledged; draws on previously untranslated material, with a focus on the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature by Nicole Brittingham Furlonge (University of Iowa Press; 206 pages; $85). Focuses on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Sterling Brown’s “Ma Rainey,” Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, and David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident.

Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries and the Diaries She Read by Barbara Lounsberry (University Press of Florida; 397 pages; $84.95). Discusses Woolf’s diaries from 1929 to her suicide, in 1941, and the diaries of 18 other writers as she read them, including Tolstoy, Dorothy Wordsworth, Maupassant, Alice James, and Gide.

MUSIC

Singing in the Age of Anxiety: Lieder Performances in New York and London between the World Wars by Laura Tunbridge (University of Chicago Press; 256 pages; $55). Discusses the revived performance of German art songs in varied transatlantic settings in the interwar period after the genre was removed from repertoires during World War I.

PHILOSOPHY

Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida’s Seminars and the New Abolitionism edited by Kelly Oliver and Stephanie M. Straub (Fordham University Press; 296 pages; $125 hardcover, $35 paperback). Writings by scholars in philosophy, law, and literature on the French philosopher’s activism and thought on the death penalty as reflected in seminars from 1999-2001.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era edited by T.V. Paul (Georgetown University Press; 312 pages; $110.95 hardcover, $36.95 paperback). Writings on whether the two neighbors’ rivalry will escalate or subside as the century proceeds; topics include water and other resource disputes, divisions over Tibet, China’s relationship with Pakistan, and nuclear deterrence.

POPULAR CULTURE

Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fan Cultures edited by Rebecca Williams (University of Iowa Press; 260 pages; $80). Writings on how fans react, both individually and as a community, in response to such phenomena as a band’s break up, a cult television show’s cancellation, or the killing off of a beloved character; topics include the continuation of a narrative through fan fiction.

PSYCHOLOGY

Copycats and Contrarians: Why We Follow Others.. and When We Don’t by Michelle Baddeley (Yale University Press; 320 pages; $26). Offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the human tendency toward herd behavior.

RELIGION

Inventing Afterlives: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Life After Death by Regina M. Janes (Columbia University Press; 392 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Explores ideas of the afterlife in varied religious traditions since ancient times and in literary and other cultural realms.

Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers As Christian Scripture by Richard S. Briggs (University of Notre Dame Press; 332 pages; $55). Offers a Christian theological and hermeneutic perspective on the Old Testament book, with particular attention to chapters 11 through 25.

SOCIOLOGY

Caribbean Masala: Indian Identity in Guyana and Trinidad by Dave Ramsaran and Linden F. Lewis (University Press of Mississippi; 169 pages; $70). Examines the negotiation of identity for descendants of indentured workers brought from India to the Caribbean in the 19th century.

Forever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror by Saher Selod (Rutgers University Press; 170 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Draws on 48 in-depth interviews in a study of how Muslims of South Asian and Arab heritage have experienced higher levels of racism in their everyday lives since 9/11.

Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US by Pei-Chia Lan (Stanford University Press; 237 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Compares approaches to parenting among four groups of ethnic Chinese---middle- and working-class families in Taiwan and middle- and working-class immigrant families in the Boston area.

THEATER

The Unfinished Art of Theater: Avant-Garde Intellectuals in Mexico and Brazil by Sarah J. Townsend (Northwestern University Press; 301 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Focuses on theater as a site for reconfiguring the relationship of art and social change in the two countries between 1917 and 1934.